'The Kite Runner' Critics

• “…. thirty-eight-year-old writer named Amir recounts the odyssey of his life.” • “This lucidly written and often touching novel gives a vivid picture of not only the Russian atrocities but also those of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. It is rightly a "soaring debut," as the Boston Globe claims, but only if we consider it a novel of sin and redemption, a son trying to redeem his father's sin. As far as the Afghan conflict is concerned, we get a selective, simplistic, even simple-minded picture. Hosseini tells us, for example, that "Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis" were behind the Taliban. He does not mention the CIA or Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to President Carter, "whose stated aim," according to Pankaj Mishra in the spring 2002 issue of Granta, "was to'sow [s—t] in the Soviet backyard.'"” • “There is no Hollywood-style solution to such grave problems of a nation steeped in the Middle Ages, is there?”

• “This adventurous and captivating story neatly functions as a metaphor of the colonial need of intervening in dark countries in order to save the sub- human others who would otherwise be lost in their ignorance and brutality.” • ….” entire plot is imbued with toxic orientalist stereotypes and the inevitable conflict between the West and the East.” • ….” a world of cruelty, barbarity and extremism” • “Hosseini alienates Amir from his cultural roots to make him friendlier for a western reckoning - “I throw my makeshift jai-namaz, my prayer rug, on the floor and I get on my knees, lower my forehead to the ground, my tears soaking through the sheet. I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven't prayed for over fifteen years. I have long forgotten the words. But it doesn't matter, I will utter those few words I still remember: La ilaha il Allah, Muhammadu rasulullah”. Similarly, Hosseini paints a resilient Hazara people as submissive and flat characters that are not capable of change, while the Pashtuns are well rounded characters capable of pro-activity.” • “The exoticization of the East, the fetishization of Muslim women and the commodification of Asian culture is everywhere. The new orientalism is perpetuated through the media, through Hollywood, through the fashion industry and tourism industry.”