The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is the debut novel of the Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, published in 2003 by Riverhead Books. It tells the story of Amir, a young Afghan boy from Wazir Akbar Khan in Kabul.

Hosseini has said that he considers the book a father-son relationship story, and the familial material is the part he continued to develop in his later novels. Themes of guilt and redemption run through it, and a pivotal scene depicts an act of sexual violence that the narrator witnesses and does nothing to prevent, which is the event the rest of the book answers for. The friendship is between Amir, the son of a wealthy Kabul family, and the son of his father's servant, and the class difference between the two boys is one of the things the book is about.

The novel's structure is a long reckoning: a childhood in Kabul, a life in America after the family escapes, and a return journey prompted by a request from an old friend of the family. The novel begins against the collapse of the Afghan monarchy and the years of conflict that followed, and its second movement follows the family's life in America.