The Kite Runner

《The Kite Runner(追风筝的人)》是一个阿富汗作家的处女作，霸占了美国两大权威新书推荐排行榜《纽约时报》排行榜、《出版商周刊》排行榜长达80余周，声势超过红透全世界的丹·布朗的《达·芬奇密码》。 这本小说太令人震撼，很长一段时日，让我所读的一切都相形失色。文学与生活中的所有重要主题，都交织在这部惊世之作里：爱、恐惧、愧疚、赎罪……——著名作家伊莎贝拉·阿连德

★一个阿富汗作家的处女作

★一部以史诗般的历史景观和荡气回肠的人性故事，深深地打动全世界各地亿万读者心的文学经典

★美国《纽约时报》、《出版商周刊》等九大新书推荐排行榜榜首图书

★英国《观察家报》2005年度最佳图书

★台湾诚品书店、金石堂书店、博客来书店销售冠军

★连续80余周雄踞《纽约时报》新书推荐排行榜，声势超过红透全球的丹·布朗的《达·芬奇密码》

“许多年过去了，人们说陈年旧事可以被埋葬，然而我终于明白这是错的，因为往事会自行爬上来。回首前尘，我意识到在过去二十六年里，自己始终在窥视着那荒芜的小径。”

《华盛顿邮报》认为：“没有虚矫赘文，没有无病呻吟，只有精炼的篇章，细腻勾勒家庭与友谊，背叛与救赎。作者对祖国的爱显然与对造成它今日沧桑的恨一样深。故事娓娓道来，轻笔淡描，近似川端康成的《千羽鹤》。”

12岁的阿富汗富家少爷阿米尔与仆人哈桑情同手足。然而，在一场风筝比赛后，发生了一件悲惨不堪的事，阿米尔为自己的懦弱感到自责和痛苦，逼走了哈桑，不久，自己也跟随父亲逃往美国。

成年后的阿米尔始终无法原谅自己当年对哈桑的背叛。为了赎罪，阿米尔再度踏上暌违二十多年的故乡，希望能为不幸的好友尽最后一点心力，却发现一个惊天谎言，儿时的噩梦再度重演，阿米尔该如何抉择？

小说如此残忍而又美丽，作者以温暖细腻的笔法勾勒人性的本质与救赎，读来令人荡气回肠。

Book Description

This is a wonderful, beautiful epic of a novel. Set in Afghanistan and the United States between the 1970s to the present day, it is a heartbreaking tale of a young boy, Amir, and his best friend who are torn apart. This is a classic word-of-mouth novel and is sure to become as universally loved as The God of Small Things and The Glass Palace.

Twelve year old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father Baba, one of the richest and most respected merchants in Kabul. He has failed to do so through academia or brawn, but the one area where they connect is the annual kite fighting tournament. Amir is determined not just to win the competition but to run the last kite and bring it home triumphantly, to prove to his father that he has the makings of a man. His loyal friend Hassan is the best kite runner that Amir has ever seen, and he promises to help him - for Hassan always helps Amir out of trouble. But Hassan is a Shi'a Muslim and this is 1970s Afghanistan. Hassan is taunted and jeered at by Amir's school friends; he is merely a servant living in a shack at the back of Amir's house. So why does Amir feel such envy towards his friend? Then, what happens to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament is to shatter all their lives, and define their futures.

Amazon.co.uk Review

The Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.

Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.

The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Lisa Alward, Amazon.ca

Book Dimension :

length: (cm)17.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)11.1