The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini This book was a part of required reading for my AS English Literature exam, and I don't expect much from books that I pretty much have to read in order to get a good grade. I honestly thought that this book would be boring and confusing because I know absolutely nothing about the Afghan culture.

I have a bit of a bone to pick with this book. It's not all that tragic for a tragedy. To be honest, I'm very neutral towards this book, mainly because I didn't have a clue of what to think of it other than there are some bloody sick elements to the story. And I don't mean that in a good way. Also, I have very little interest in Afghanistan and Afghan culture or the Muslim faith in general. I'm not xenophobic or islamaphobic, I'm just not interested.

A lot of Farsi words are used in the place of English words that have no equivalent and I could just barely grasp the meaning of them, unless they were explained. I still don't know what Inshallah means. They just seemed a bit unnecessary to me. Plus, the fact that I had to do a reading log for every five chapters doesn't help much.

I really didn't know what to give this because I was so neutral, so I'll give it 3 stars. As I said, the ending was disappointing. I was expecting a heart-wrenching, tear-jerking ending and I got one that was quite happy. Not good for a tragedy.