The Kite Runner

Sometimes one comes across a book that makes one feel so good about having read it; feel privileged almost that one had the opportunity to read something like it. For me, that book was "The Kite Runner." I was totally unaware of the hype surrounding it and I just accidentally stumbled across it. I had two books to read last weekend--"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" and "The Kite Runner". HBP was something I had been saving for the weekend, something I had been looking forward to. But the less said about it the better. Thank God I had "The Kite Runner" to turn to.
What Khaled Hosseini does is paint a very vivid picture. The book just comes alive. So what if I have never been to Kabul, I could see it in my mind's eye. I could see Amir and Hassan, the two childhood friends, one the master and the latter the ever loyal, faithful and very lovable servant. The one whose first word was Amir and who was eventually betrayed by the one he would have done anything for. I could see the two boys going to a hillock, climbing trees, flying kites; feel Amir's loathing for himself and his pain at his father's coldness towards him.
The pain of betrayal and the joy of redemption.
It is just a book that made one want to not read anything else for a while. Not my words, but something that Isabelle Allende says about the book. I second it.