The Kite Runner

I love holidays because they give me a license to lose myself in books.

I picked up The Kite Runner from the airport on the way to Palm Cove after I'd heard so many rave reviews from my friends.

It was ah-mazing. I couldn't put it down. I get terrible motion sickness and even risked vomiting on the plane to read the whole way up to Cairns.

I've never read a book before where my jaw has literally dropped with shock. I was sometimes scared to read to the end of the chapter, completely affected by what I was reading.

The worst bit was finishing it so early into my trip that I was stuck with nothing left to read for the rest of the holiday!

Here's the synopsis from author Khaled Hosseini's website. If you haven't read it, you simply must. It's a moving history lesson if nothing else, really puts life into perspective.

Can't wait to hire the movie this weekend - just don't watch the trailer before you've read the book though, it gives too much away.

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.