I thrive on fictions. I still do. And as far as this year goes, there's one fiction that really stands out, at least to me. And this book is by far My Best Book of The Year. Simply Marvelous. Found it by chance a few months ago at Kinokuniya and have been re reading it several times over.
It is called The Kite Runner - authored by an Afghan medical doctor who grew up in San Francisco, Khaled Hosseini.
It is about an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was a loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" and was the son of his best friend's (Amir) father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.
The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. Said to be the first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the Taliban.
Kalau ada kesempatan, I suggest that you read this book. Somehow, this book humbles me. And it's only a fiction, boleh? I can't help it - it's the melodramatic me that read (and feel) the book.
Yeah, How old am I again?
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