Khaled Husseini is an Afghan-American writer living in America and writes in English. He was born in March 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father was a diplomat for the Afghan foreign ministry. The foreign ministry transmitted them to Paris, but they couldn’t return to their homeland because of the Soviet army invasion. They moved to the United States, California in 1980. The Kite Runner is Husseini’s first novel, it was published in 2003, and It became an international bestseller book. It is the first novel written in English by an Afghan author. He is known for his portrayal of Afghanistan’s life and culture. The Kite Runner takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan. The protagonist is a young boy who is a child of a wealthy businessman. He struggles of a long journey of exile and displacement from his homeland via Peshawar, Pakistan to San Francisco, America after the Soviet invasion. Living in an Afghan …show more content…
This paper will focus on the journey of displacement and the contrary positions between Afghanistan and America. Further, this paper will also distinguish the different reaction between baba and Amir to the diasporic experience. In the first chapter, the study will discuss the diasporic literature and Edward Said on diaspora and exile, defining the term of diaspora, its relation to postcolonialism and the representation of diaspora in literature, and going to Said’s thoughts of exile. The second chapter will tackle Khaled Husseini as a diasporic writer through the protagonist Amir and his father’s diaspora. The third chapter will be about the journey of Amir and Baba in displacement from the homeland. The fourth chapter will discuss the contradictory life between Afghanistan and America, how baba loses his status and how the Afghans deal with different cultures. The fifth chapter will argue how Amir and baba have different respond to the diasporic
"Mir Tamim Ansary - Afghan American Author and Lecturer." Mir Tamim Ansary Afghan American Author and Lecturer. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
The Kite Runner, is the first novel written by Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan before the war in the city of Kabul, and then eventually in America. The novel relays the struggles of Amir (A young Shi’ boy), Hassan (a young Hazera servant boy) and Baba (Amir’s father) as they are growing up in an ever-changing Afghanistan. The young boys face difficult challenges most adults will never have to experience. Amir, Hassan, and even Baba must overcome cruelty in every aspect of their lives.
He is able to capture the realness of the time and setting through his words, and write for a purpose. As a result, it can be said that he uses this work of historical fiction less as a theatrical stage and more as a platform to introduce the audience to the inhumaneness of Afghanistan. He not only incorporates the Taliban’s grueling “beard lookout men,” who patrol the roads in their fancy Toyota trucks in hopes of finding “a smooth-shaven face to bloody,” but he also displays the horrific and bloodcurdling abuse of women that exists at the hands’ of men and the feelings of great despair and pain that these women face as a result. Living in a state of unbearable fear of the next beating, the next detonating bomb, and the next brutal attempt of the Taliban, the lives of these characters feel almost too real to not be true. Resultantly, the reader is left to wonder whether or not this added literary dimension of realness is actually an introspective study of individuals that Hosseini has long
The novel is told by Amir, one of the novel's main characters. Amir is an Afghan man living in Fremont, California remembering his childhood in Kabul in the 1970s.
Amir notes the change he and Baba experienced in American—“For me, America was a place to bury my memories. For Baba, a place to mourn his” (129).
How I had lighed. I smiled at the memory now” (Hosseini 366). Had Amir not immigrated to America, one would not see a cleansed and stable main character reminiscing about his father at the end.
The story is set in Afghanistan and America, lasting about 30 years from the fall of Afghanistan monarchy to the collapse of the tyranny of the Taliban regime. In the form of the first person, the novel tells us the story about the protagonist Amir’s growth from immature to mature. Amir is born a rich family in Kabul, and he has a happy childhood with his servant, Hassan, who is loyalty and selfless to Amir from the begin to the end. While after a kite fighting competition, Amir betrays Hassan and their friendship because of his selfishness and cowardice. When he grows up, he gets an opportunity to” be good again”. Then he goes back to Afghanistan to save Hassan’s child. Finally, he finishes his redemption. At meantime, the novel describes
“The Other Side of the Sky” a memoir by Farah Ahmedi is Ahmedi’s real-life experiences of escaping Afghanistan
Because of the drastic differences in the two main settings of the story, war-time Middle East and freedom-loving America, Khaled Housseini accents the struggle the Middle East has in maintaining peace. Even inside of Afghanistan, he shows further contrast using a slight character foil of Amir, a privileged child, and Farid, the hardworking "real Afghan". This shows just how different the life of someone who lives even just a neighborhood away can be. By doing this, the author creates more internal conflict between Amir and his harshest critic, himself.
The movie Kite Runner,by Khaled Hosseini and the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, are set in Kabul Afghanistan and convey the struggles of living during the time of the war. The novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini , targets the violent lives and bond of Mariam and Laila. The novel exhibits the rough circumstances living in Afghanistan, through the eyes of the two women in the novel. In contrast to the novel, is the movie Kite Runner. This movie concentrates on the father-son relationship between Amir and his wealthy, noble father, Baba.
In the beginning, we are introduced Amir who is the son of Baba, they live in a lavish home in Kabul. His mother unfortunately passed at childbirth while having Amir. Baba is a successful business man who has built an orphanage and had a successful career. Amir and Baba do not agree on a great deal of stuff especially Amir’s career in writing. Baba
One aspect of the novel that highlights this struggle is its setting, as it takes place during four time periods, each at a different stage in Afghan history. Throughout these unstable decades, the country’s government went through continuous upheavals with each new government advocating different
In both of his novels, Hosseini has both protagonists and antagonists originating from Afghanistan. He depicts the flaws of the broad generalizations many people believe due to a lack of information or insight into the concerning situations occurring in Afghanistan. As awareness about the indecencies taking place in Afghanistan increases, hopefully more individuals will take action to aide those being oppressed and help solve the turmoil occurring due to the presence of the Taliban. Works Cited Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner.
Guilt prompts Amir to go back to Afghanistan and drives Baba to care for Hassan. In the beginning of the book, Amir expresses that “it’s wrong what they say about the past… about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out(Hosseini 1).” Amir realizes this when the guilt never goes away from when he ignored Hassan when Hassan needed help. Amir constantly tries to forget about the past and how the rape impacted his relationship with Hassan and Ali. However, even with Amir’s efforts to obliterate the memory of the event, it resurfaces with Rahim Khan’s request to find Sohrab. Initially, Amir is reluctant to go to Kabul to look for Sohrab, but he remembers Rahim Khan saying, “There is a way to be good again(Hosseini 226).” Desperate for the chance to redeem himself, Amir returns to Kabul with the intention of transporting Sohrab to a better place. Amir understands that the only way for him to stop feeling guilty about the winter of 1975 is that he finds Sohrab and verifies that he lives a more secure life. In Baba’s case, he was able to care for Hassan as an uncle and the guilt he has inclined him to help others by building an orphanage. Also, with Ali’s permission, Baba is able to “[hire] Dr. Kumar to fix Hassan’s harelip(Hosseini 225)” and give Hassan birthday presents to show his affection. Caring for Hassan helps Baba get rid of the guilt he feels from the affair. Even though Baba could only show his love as a friend and not as a father, he embraces the opportunity with open arms. The guilt that both Amir and Baba experiences motivate them to do whatever they can to make up for their
Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani writer and self-confessed “transcontinental mongrel”. Born in 1971 in Lahore, Hamid shifted to the United States at the age of eighteen. He attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School and worked briefly as a management consultant in New York. After living in London for a few tears, he moved back to Pakistan and currently lives in Lahore with his wife and daughter.