I read it some time back. I agree it's a very good book.
The main thing it did manage to do was convey to me the variation and richness of life in Afghanistan and Kabul, how fiercly the inhabitants love their country and why. There wasn't any doubt in reading the descriptive parts that the author had experienced this for himself and wanted to convey the once beauty and wonder of the place, and the love he had for his old city and country. He managed to portray the beauty and customs and the diversity of their culture and society without at all glossing over the severe class distinctions, prejudices and general unfairness to women and to people with physical imperfections, for instance. Also he showed how such things corrupted or limited the lives and spirit and possibilities of people living all this in their daily lives, mostly without questioning it, whether belonging to the upper or lower "race" - and all this before the Taliban. Before reading the book I didn't know first thing about the different groups of Pashtuns and Hazara, and how the latter are considered inferior by the former merely based on an argument of race.
Having always only seen the poor torn-apart country in the news, blasted to rubble and with huddled masses of people clad in rags, it seems easy to think that that's all there is, or was. The kite runner has shown me differently. In my mind's eye I shut out the news images and instead pictured a Kabul with mansions and parks and pomegranate trees, with storytelling in the shades, with riotuous enjoyment of cinema, with women professors or teachers, and with colourful kites flying over the city.
I've seen it said in reviews that the book presents the Taliban poorly, one dimensional, as sociopatic bullies. That may be so, but being a woman and knowing the Taliban's absolutely despicable treatment of women that sort of depiction was completely fine by me. I was not at all bothered by any lack of understanding for the Taliban and their behaviour that the book might show. However I agree that in this way it could be argued the book finds an easy way of dismissing the Taliban and the reasons for their rise to power through letting the character of Assef being their main representative. People like that thrive in this kind of regime, sure enough, but are they representative of the forces and development that bring them to power?
It's an emotional story, a tragic story, a story of redemption.... The story itself and the main characters gripped my heart, and didn't let go.
