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“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.��

I’ve read books before with an unreliable narrator and also read accounts of cowardice and shame. Amir, the first-person protagonist and narrator from Hosseini’s 2003 novel, filled me with such disgust and loathing that I almost put the book down at 25%.

My doctor would say that Amir suffered from AWDD �� Ass whooping deficiency disorder and I would enthusiastically second that diagnosis.

That said, I invite everyone to read the book and see how it all plays out.

“There is a way to be good again...��

The poet Galway Kinnell once wrote that there are some regrets we can never be rid of. He was right in so many ways. An inability to forgive ourselves for past moments of cowardice, shame and inaction are the most troubling and relentless sorrows we can face as humans wandering around on this poor earth. We can forgive others, even those who have harmed us greatly, but looking ourselves in the eye and offering absolution can be an act beyond so many of us.

I took my time getting to this book for a great many reasons and now that I have finally read it, I am so glad. This book moved me. Hosseini was able to pluck heart strings of emotion that I had thought silent and stolid. The themes of loyalty, friendship, devotion countered with betrayal, animosity and selfishness were plaintive notes played out in a literary orchestra of human sentiment.

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.��

We follow a distorted tale of mistakes and timidity towards an ultimate chance at redemption. Amir’s is an understood but still contemptuous plight of lost opportunity. Shielded by cultural, social and religious privilege, his regrettable acts of pusillanimity are displayed against the heroic and admirable examples of his steadfast friend Hassan and his intrepid father. Hosseini paints us a picture of an evolving and destabilizing Afghanistan, tortured for years with Soviet occupation and then granted only the briefest of reprieves before falling to the theocratic and brutal rule of the Taliban. Amir’s journey is one of deliverance and redemption.

Hosseini’s skill and adept description of a modern day caste system where an invisible division existed between the favored Pashtun and the disadvantaged Hazara may be a tale of Afghanistan, but this abstract and superficial distinction can also be a universal cautionary story about racism, intolerance and bigotry.

Beautifully written and told with compassion, empathy and with a skilled writer’s eye for detail and expression, this can also be a painful book to read. Not for everyone, but for those who can endure what is at times heartbreaking the reward is as magnificent as is this work.

“For you, a thousand times over”��