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One City One Book
Redlands Reads: The
Kite Runner
Welcome
to the second Redlands Reads - One City One Book program. Our hope is to bring
together those who reside, work and study in the city of Redlands to read and discuss a single book
together.
Following
the inaugural One City, One Book program (Redlands Reads Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein), Redlands residents and
members of the University of Redlands community voted to make The Kite Runner
the next One City, One Book selection. It is now time
to begin reading! The A.K. Smiley Public Library has purchased 200 copies of The
Kite Runner. These will be made available to the general public on a first
come, first serve basis until they run out.
Copies
will be available for loan in the Office of Diversity Affairs at the University of Redlands. Extra copies have also been
purchased in the Armacost Library on the University of Redlands campus. Those who followed Frankenstein
should note that the serialization of that book in the Daily Facts was
an anomaly because the copyright on that novel had expired and it is now in the
public domain. The Kite Runner, will not, therefore, be available in
chapter form.
The
Kite Runner is a particularly apt
choice given the importance of issues of immigration, civil unrest and the current
situation in Afghanistan.
It is a best-seller that gives readers a glimpse of what might be a different
world for them, telling a tale of friendship and relationships through the lens
of the past and present situation in Afghanistan.
We
hope that you will plan to attend one of the discussions around The Kite
Runner as well as the showing of the film.
We
hope that the words of one early participant in Redlands Reads will compel you
to participate in this project: Kathryn Wood, Associate Director for Community
Service Learning at the University
of Redlands commented,
For
me The Kite Runner was an unexpected love. This was a book that I would
not have normally read. I literally picked it up and did not put it down,
waiting to go home from work to read it again and staying up late to finish.
I read the book in three days and I am so glad it was on the list
for One City, One Book! I would encourage anyone
to read this heart-wrenching and heart-warming story of a young man’s life. I
have recommended it to others and it has been my number one choice this year to
give as a holiday gift!
One
City, One Book is brought to you by the University of Redlands,
the A.K. Smiley Public Library, and the Redlands Daily Facts.
THE KITE RUNNER
Over two
years on the New York Times bestseller list, and published in 42 different
languages.
Taking us from Afghanistan
in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the
unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys
growing up in Kabul.
Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow
up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a
prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara,
member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates,
reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade
and Amir and his father flee the country for a new
life in California,
Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he
cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.
The Kite
Runner is a novel about
friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between
fathers and sons, and the power of their lies. Written against a history that
has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich
culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the
devastation, Khaled Hosseini
also gives us hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and
storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption.
KHALED
HOSSEINI
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan,
in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his
mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry
relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a
bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States.
In September of 1980, Hosseini's family moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at
Santa Clara University where he earned a bachelor's
degree in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of
California-San Diego's School
of Medicine, where he
earned a Medical Degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital
in Los Angeles.
Hosseini was a practicing internist between 1996 and
2004.
While in medical practice, Hosseini began writing his
first novel, The Kite Runner, in March of 2001. In 2003, The Kite
Runner, was published and has since become an international bestseller,
published in 38 countries. In 2006 he was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the
United Nations Refugee Agency. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns was
published in May of 2007. He lives in northern California.
AFGHANISTAN and HOSSEINI’S
STORY
Afghanistan, a nation in southwestern Asia, is bordered by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, China, Pakistan
and Iran.
It is a largely undeveloped country of more than 250,000 square miles with a
population of about 25 million. The majority of the Afghan people are farmers
or nomads who have sheep or goats. Kabul
is the capital city.
Almost 99% of the people of Afghanistan are Muslim. Most villages
and groups have a religious leader, a mullah, who is very influential and
educates the young. Though the people share the Islamic religion, there are
many differences throughout the country. There are approximately twenty
different ethnic groups, which are further divided into tribes. The largest
ethnic groups are the Pashtuns and the Tajiks. The Kite Runner’s Hassan
and his father, Ali, are Hazaras, a minority group
with a low status. The various ethnic groups have different languages and
cultures, contributing to disunity within the country.
The true, turbulent history of Afghanistan plays a critical role
in driving The Kite Runner. When the story begins, Amir
enjoys a privileged childhood in the early 1970s. In 1973, a revolt overthrew
the royal Zahir Shar and
established the Republic
of Afghanistan led by
Muhammad Daoud Khan, a royal cousin. This is the
first disruption of Amir’s Kabul.
Kabul becomes dangerous for Amir and
his father in the late 1970s. In 1978, rival leaders staged a revolt and Daoud was killed. Opposition to this new government
believed that the policies were not in the Muslim tradition and the Soviet Union had too much control. The Soviets sent
troops into Afghanistan
to fight against the rebels from 1979 to 1989. In the novel, it is the Soviet
invasion that forces Amir and his father to flee the
country.
Many groups fought for control of Afghanistan in
the beginning of the 1990s, until the conservative Islamic Taliban came to
power. In The Kite Runner, Amir must return to
Afghanistan
and face the brutality of the Taliban regime. The Taliban leaders, Pashtun religious students exiled in Pakistan during
the Soviet invasion, interpreted Islamic law harshly and imposed strict
restrictions on the Afghan people, for example, banning most forms of
entertainment. By the novel’s end, Amir and his
family find it strange to hear Afghanistan
as the topic of conversation in America.
The attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the Taliban’s harboring of Osama
bin Laden, the man held responsible for the terrorist attacks, brought swift
change for Amir’s homeland as the United States and Great
Britain launched massive air strikes against Taliban-held
territories in Afghanistan.
Because of Afghanistan’s turbulent history,
many Afghan people became refugees or emigrated. In the 1920s and 1930s,
Afghans immigrated to Washington, DC and other large cities on the East and West Coasts.
The majority of the immigrants was well-educated and had been wealthy in their
native land. Generally, new Afghan immigrants today still choose to reside in
large urban areas, regardless of financial status. In the 1980s, a large number
of Afghan refugees settled in the San
Francisco area.
(Gratefully borrowed from the Santa Monica
Public Library Resource Guide for The Kite
Runner)
SUGGESTED
FURTHER READING
Afghanistan – A Short History of Its People and Politics by Martin Ewans, 2001
Crescent
by Diana Abu-Jaber,
2003.
Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez, 2007
Taliban by Ahmed Rashid, 2001
The
Bookseller of Kabul
by Asne Seierstad, 2003
The
Swallows of Kabul
by Yasmina Khadra, 2004
Three
Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
and David Oliver Relin, 2006
Torn
Between Two Cultures: An Afghan-American Woman Speaks Out by Maryam Qudrat
Aseel, 2003
Veiled
Courage: Inside the Afghan Women’s Resistance by Cheryl Benard, 2002
SUGGESTED
FURTHER VIEWING
Afghan
Stories,
produced and directed by Taran Davies,
2002
Kandahar, a film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2001
Osama,
written and directed by Mohammed Reza Darwishi
The
Beauty Academy of Kabul, directed by Liz
Mermin, 2004
WEB
RESOURCES
Khaled Hosseini’s site: www.khaledhosseini.com
Afghan
History at Afghanistan
Online:
www.afghan-web.com/history
Kite-flying
in Afghanistan:
www.afghana.com/Entertainment/Gudiparanbazi.htm
Timeline: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1162108.stm
FACILITATED BOOK
DISCUSSIONS
Thursday, May 1, 7 PM
University of Redlands (Gregory 161)
Wednesday, May 7, 7 PM
Barnes & Noble, Citrus Plaza
Tuesday, May 13, 7 PM
Assembly Room, A.K. Smiley
Public Library
Tuesday, May 20, 7 PM
Assembly Room, A.K. Smiley
Public Library
Wednesday, May 28, 7 PM
Barnes & Noble, Citrus Plaza
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
http://www.bloomsbury.com/ReadersGroups/Readersguides.asp?isbn=0747566534
1.
The novel begins ‘I became what I am today at
the age of twelve’. To what is Amir referring? Is his
assertion entirely true? What other factors have helped form his character? How
would you describe Amir?
2.
Amir had never thought of Hassan as
his friend, despite the evident bond between them, just as Baba did not think
of Ali as his friend. What parallels can be drawn between Amir
and Hassan’s relationship, and Baba and Ali’s? How
would you describe the relationship between the two boys? What makes them so
different in the way they behave with each other? What is it that makes Amir inflict small cruelties on Hassan?
Had you already guessed at the true relationship between them? If so, at what point and why?
3.
It is Amir’s dearest
wish to please his father. To what extent does he succeed in doing so and at
what cost? What kind of man is Baba? How would you describe his relationship
with Amir, and with Hassan?
How does that relationship change and what prompts
those changes?
4.
Khaled Hosseini vividly describes Afghanistan,
both the privileged world of Amir’s childhood and the
stricken country under the Taliban. How did his descriptions differ from ideas
that you may already have had about Afghanistan? What cultural
differences become evident in the American passages of the novel? How easy do
the Afghans find it to settle in the US?
5.
After Soraya tells Amir about her past, she says ‘I’m so lucky to have found
you. You’re so different from every Afghan guy I’ve met’. What do you think of
the reasons that Amir puts forward for this? Could
there be others? How do Afghan women fare in America? Are they any better off
than they were in Afghanistan
before the Taliban seized power?
6.
On the drive to Kabul Farid says to
Amir ‘You’ve always been a tourist here, you just
didn’t know it.’ What is Farid implying? What
do you think of his implication? Amir feels that he
is 'home again' but how well does he know or
understand his country?
7.
How does Hosseini
succeed in bringing the horror of the Taliban to life? Why did he choose the
role for Assef that he did?
8.
After reading Amir's
story Rahim Khan writes to him: 'the most impressive
thing about your story is that it has irony.’ It is surely an irony that Hassan, whose ignorance Amir
pillories, points out that there was no need for the man to kill his wife to
weep tears, he could simply have smelled an onion. How
important is irony in the book? Were their other instances that particularly
struck you?
9.
How important is religion in the book? What
attitudes do the main characters have to it? How do they compare to the popular
Western idea of Islam?
10.
What is the significance of kites in the book?
What do you think they symbolize? Who is the eponymous kite runner?