Reading & Creating Texts – Unit 1
By Khaled Hosseini
KHALED HOSSEINI Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His mother was a teacher; his father a diplomat. His family left Afghanistan for a posting in Paris in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. They had every intention of returning. However, when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in 1980, the Hosseini family sought political asylum in the United States. Khaled Hosseini now lives in California, where he works as a doctor. He is married and has two children. The Kite Runner is his first book. In a recent interview, Hosseini states: 'The story line of my novel is largely fictional. The characters were invented and the plot imagined. However, there certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative. Probably the passages most resembling my own life are the ones in the US, with Amir and Baba trying to build a new life. I, too, came to the US as an immigrant and I recall vividly those first few years in California, the brief time we spent on welfare, and the difficult task of assimilating into a new culture. My father and I did work for a while at the flea market and there really are rows of Afghans working there, some of whom I am related to.' Hosseini 'wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan of history. For many people in the west, Afghanistan is synonymous with the Soviet war and the Taliban.' He explains: T wanted to remind people that Afghans had managed to live in peaceful anonymity for decades, that the history of the Afghans in the twentieth century has been largely peaceful and harmonious.' Hosseini experienced Kabul with his brother 'the way Amir and Hassan do: long school days in the summer, kite fighting in the winter time, westerns with John Wayne at Cinema Park, big parties at our house in Wazir Akbar Khan, picnics in Paghman.' He has 'very fond memories of childhood in Afghanistan, largely because [his] memories, unlike those of the current generation of Afghans, are untainted by the spectre of war, landmines, and famine.'
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE KITE RUNNER There are some clear parallels between Hosseini's own life and that of the protagonist of The Kite Runner, Amir. Hosseini had a privileged life in Kabul which was much like the life Amir leads. The text evokes the sense of place very clearly and richly, both in the early chapters in Kabul and in the flea market in San Jose. Hosseini has acknowledged that the setting for the early part of the novel, with its descriptions of the house Amir grows up in and even the name of the suburb that Amir lives in, Wazir Akbar Khan, is 'almost directly lifted from my own life'.1 Hosseini has also indicated that his description of the Afghan section of the San Jose flea market is based on his own experience of it.
VCE ENGLISH UNIT 1&2
1
Reading & Creating Texts – Unit 1
As well as the setting of the text in both Afghanistan and America, the larger political background which is woven through the novel is taken from life. Although The Kite Runner was written before Hosseini returned to Afghanistan, he had been part of the Afghan-American community who relayed to each other the details of life in Afghanistan throughout its tumultuous recent political history.
SYNOPSIS During the last, peaceful days of Afghanistan's monarchy, twelve-year-old Amir lives a privileged life in a well-to-do area of Kabul with his businessman father, Baba, and their two servants, Ali and his son Hassan. Amir's mother died giving birth to him. Hassan and Amir are inseparable, sharing a love of competitive kite flying and running - chasing the winning kite to its resting place and claiming it. However, during the competition in 1975, when Amir is twelve years old and desperate to win in order to earn the approval of his severe father, Hassan is raped by the bully, Assef. To Amir's enduring shame he does nothing to help Hassan but runs away. This act of betrayal destroys the boys' friendship, because Amir cannot forgive himself; following a further act of treachery by Amir, AN and Hassan leave the family. Eventually, when the Russians invade Afghanistan in the late 1970s, Amir and his father escape through Pakistan to the United States. In California, Amir completes his college studies, marries Soraya and becomes a successful published writer, but is always haunted by his dark secret. Then, some years after Baba's death, Amir receives a phone call from the dying Rahim Khan, which leads him to travel to Peshawar, Pakistan. Rahim Khan tells Amir about Hassan's fate, that he and Hassan share the same father, and that Hassan's son, Sohrab, is in an orphanage in Kabul. Kabul, like the rest of Afghanistan, is now ruled by the violent, oppressive Taliban. Thus begins the final stage in Amir's quest for redemption; he accepts responsibility for Sohrab and traces him to the home of a vicious Taliban leader, his old adversary, Assef. A terrible fight ensues and Sohrab saves Amir's life with his slingshot, but Amir is very badly beaten. When he recovers, Amir resolves to bring the very troubled, sexually abused Sohrab back to America, with Soraya's supportive approval. The obstacles to Sohrab's immigration are significant, and when he thinks he might be returned to an orphanage, he attempts to kill himself. Eventually Amir and Sohrab return to the United States, but Sohrab longs for his old life. The book ends on a note of cautious optimism, as Amir becomes Sohrab's kite runner in a park in Fremont, quoting Hassan's words: "For you, a thousand times over" (323). The personal and the political are closely linked in this story of a fraught father-son relationship, of ethnic differences and the oppression of the Hazara. The servants, Ali and Hassan, are Hazara while Baba and Amir are the more powerful Pashtuns. The political turmoil of Afghanistan and the tragic loss of a way of life are mirrored in the personal struggle of Amir for redemption and reconciliation, a struggle that knits the narrative together.
VCE ENGLISH UNIT 1&2
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