Chapter 3 “Who is my father?”

The novel doesn't have the names of each chapter, but I will give a title to all the chapters. This chapter was named “Who is my father?” because all the episode, Amir is talking about his father. 

Baba builds an orphanage for children in Kabul because he became one of the richest merchants in this city. Amir sees Baba as the best father, but sometimes Baba only sees the world in black and white, for example, one day after the school they argue about a Mullah, a man who taught Amir in the school about Islam.

Amir was always learning things about Baba from other people, for instance, in the previous discussion, Baba said Amir: “There is no act more wretched than stealing”. The word steal was used referring to the assassin of the grandfather of Amir. In this discussion, we can deduce the great power that Baba had.

Finally, Amir listened a conversation of his father where he mentioned that Amir is not violent and probably he’ll never take over the business of Baba. Then, this could affect the growth of Amir, as consequence, this conversation causes an conflict with himself.

Relevant information about the second chapter.

In the second chapter, Amir remembers when he and his friend, Hassan, were children. They lived in the same house, although the owner of the house is the father of Amir. Hassan’s father is the servant and friend of the father of Amir (Baba). Moreover, he describes how the house of his father is. It is a beautiful and big house. The people in Kabul think that it is probably the prettiest house in the city.

Amir explains us all about his mother, Sanaubar, she hemorrhaged to death during his childbirth and his friend, Hassan, lost his less than a week after he was born.

On the other hand, Amir relates one history, where the soldiers disturb Amir and Hassan in the streets of Kabul when they went to the movie. It is a short history but the details show their difficult situation.

In the same chapter, he gives an introduction about the Hazaras and Pashtuns, after this, he shows the main differences between the two ethnic groups of Afghanistan.

In conclusion, this chapter gives the details of how was his life when he was living with his father and he exhibits the problems and advantages that he had when he was a child.

My first impression about "The kite runner"

Before I start reading the novel, I begin reading the recommendations of famous, news, journals and people. Most of them think that the book is an extraordinary novel which mentioned different concepts like the price of betrayal, the possibility of redemption and the influence of fathers over sons.

The title of the book apparently isn't related with the story. The novel is about Amir, a boy from Kabul Afghanistan, who describes the country and conflicts when Afghanistan’s monarchy fell through an invasion, this story is located between 1975 and 2001.

For the moment I only read the first and second chapters. In the first chapter Amir is located in December 2001, he has a short conversation with Rahim Khan who is a friend of Pakistan and for a moment he begins to remember some stories in the winter of 1975. He looked up and saw twin kites which remembered his family and friends. Probably for this moment the books was titled “The kite runner”.

Why did I choose the novel "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini?

The first thing I did was to find the list of best-selling books, because it contains the number of copies sold of each book and all the times these books are commonly read around the world. The list ensures that in most cases the books are interesting, amusing or with more content.

In the list, we have books such “A tale of two cities”, “The lord of the rings” and “The hobbit” but these books was published in 1859, 1954 and 1937 respectively. I was finding a recent book and I found “The Da Vinci Code (2003)” and “Angels and Demons (2000)” by Dan Brown. Dan Brown’s books are good choices but I read these books twice in English and Spanish.

I found “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini published in 2003 with 10 million of approximate sales and I chose this Novel because I don't read the book before and it would be interesting.

This is the link where I found the information about the list of best-selling books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books