Hosseini, Khaled - The Kite Runner

5:16pm Thursday 3rd January 2008

WHEN a book is made into a film, it's tempting to save the hours that could be spent reading and head straight to the cinema.

Marc Forster's film adaptation of The Kite Runner is enjoying deservedly good reviews from critics.

But Khaled Hosseini's debut novel is well worth the extra time and effort.

The story traces the ambivalent relationship between two boys - the narrator Amir, born into a privileged Sunni Muslim family, and Hassan, the family's servant from an inferior Shi'a caste - growing up in 1970s Afghanistan.

Despite these ethnic and religious differences the boys are firm friends, until an incident on a cold winter's evening after the annual kite-flying competition destroys the balance and changes their lives forever.

Inevitably more complex and subtle than the film, Hosseini's simple but poignant narrative makes even more potent the universal themes of loyalty, jealousy, guilt and atonement that are carefully drawn out in the events that follow.

The Kite Runner gives life and colour to an alien cultural backdrop, offering an engaging insight into the tragic changes to the author's beloved home country wrought by the Taliban.

More powerful than film shots, Hosseini's words paint images that haunt the memory long after the last page is turned.