4.25

If you've wondering why I've rated this book one star, I'll tell you that as an Afghan that I found this book to extremely offesnive and most Afghans who've read this book also hated this book because clearly Khaled written this book to appeal to the Amercian audience and have spread some harmful misinformaiton about Afghans in his books.

I'll send you a link to a reddit post because I'm not the most articualte person, but I'll copy and paste the the summary and the post for you guys.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Afghan/comments/ssi2k7/on_khaled_hosseini/

What the Afghan community had a problem with:

Oversimplification of ethnic tensions in Afghanistan. Whilst it is true that Hazaras are oppressed in Afghanistan, he wrote the book in such a racially charged, black-and-white way that (probably unintentionally) vilified Pashtuns and caused a lot of offence to diaspora Afghan readers.

The origin story of the brothers. Whilst extra-marital affairs do take place in Afghanistan (let's be real lol), it was the portrayal of Baba and Sanaubar that also caused offence to both the Pashtun and Hazara community. Sanaubar (an ethnic Hazara) is written as an uncaring mother who abandons her son and husband and runs away to join travelling dancers immediately after giving birth to Hassan out of wedlock. Hassan's biological father is also the father of Amir, an ethnic Pashtun who betrays his best friend and adopted brother (Sanaubar's husband Ali, also Hazara) in the worst way possible. To make this worse, Ali is also his servant which deepens the duplicity further due to the power dynamic of master/servant on top of the fact that they were brothers. Whilst the whole book is about betrayal, the sensitivity surrounding ethnicity was not handled well at all.

Religious Afghans took offence at Baba's consumption of alcohol and said it misrepresented Pashtuns as a whole. This was also categorised under the 'anti-Pashtun sentiment' grievance.

Many Afghans disliked the foul language, sexually explicit content and the fact that it was marketed for a younger audience than they felt it should. This sentiment was also echoed amongst other readers too.

Pedophilia, rape scene

Further to the above point, the producers of the Kite Runner and Khaled Hosseini himself went out of their way to travel to Afghanistan in order to recruit child actors for their roles. He cast two boys, both of whom had to be evacuated from Afghanistan due to death threats. Zekeria Ebrahimi, who played the Pashtun Amir, faced death threats from Hazara classmates due to the way he treated his Hazara counterpart onscreen. Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, who played the Hazara Hassan, also faced death threats. After three years, Mahmoodzada was repatriated to Afghanistan, where he continued to have threats made against his life for his role (and also due to the rape scene which many Afghans felt dishonoured their country). So, he had to leave Afghanistan on his own, without support from the movie makers, and emigrated to Sweden.

EVEN WORSE, the producers wanted a CHILD (Mahmoodzada) to enact the rape scene! His father (rightfully so) stopped them after they told Mahmoodzada they wanted him to take his pants off and had later told press that he would never have accepted the acting opportunity if he hadn't been deceived about his son's role in the movie nor the extent of nudity they wanted from him! In the end, they had to use a body double but it still drew death threats towards the boy. If Hosseini hadn't been so insistent on using Afghan actors this would never have happened! And btw, the cast for Amir as an adult wasn't even Afghan so why couldn't he get diaspora Afghans or vaguely Middle-Eastern child actors from the West to do it instead of playing with their lives? Hosseini is AFGHAN ffs, he's not a clueless American, he should have known that it would lead to this!

The above points were roundly seen by both Pashtuns and Hazaras living in Afghanistan as a way to incite ethnic violance.

Additional Personal Criticisms:

I personally don't like the way that Khaled Hosseini writes, his prose is the same in all of his books and the plot is essentially always the same, too.

Assef was a terrible villain and his whole origin story was totally implausible. A blonde haired, blue eyed half German, half Pashtun child living in Kabul who knows all about Hitler and Nazism and uses it against Hassan, a Hazara, to justify his barbarity? It's cartoonish and very difficult to believe. Tell me, how often do you find half German half Afghan Nazis in Kabul who go on to become Taliban and rape Hazara children? It's laughable and it also plays into the problematic portrayal of Pashtuns in his novel. Couldn't take his character seriously at all.

Why are Hazaras either portrayed as promiscuous, rape victims or meek servants to Pashtuns in his novel???

Why are Pashtuns either portrayed as child abusers, Taliban or heavy drinkers?

The rape scene in the movie was for nothing more than shock value, and like countless others have said before, put Mahmoodzada into a great deal of danger.

Hazara children are constantly getting raped in his novel. First Hassan, then his son Sohrab and the tens of Hazara 'dancing boys' and girls before him from the orphanage that Assef abducted. I get that it's supposed to show the legacy of trauma and the bacha bazi issue but for God's sake it's so difficult to read and it is also a subcategory under the 'victim' label above. Hazaras can be strong, too- but they never are in his novels. In fact, the more I read, the more they end up dead or raped in his books. It's very similar to the 'killing off black characters' trope in Hollywood. It also somewhat misconstrues the bacha bazi issue and reduces it to an ethnic standpoint. Children all over the country, regardless of ethnicity, have been victim to this horrific practice, not just Hazaras.

This book is being taken as gospel and factual by Americans even though Hosseini never experienced the same issues he's written about.

He should have amplified Hazara voices, not written for them and caused offence. There are plenty of victims who's testimonies could have been taken for inspiration but he constantly went for the above points.

Putting 'white passing features' and blonde hair and blue eyes on a pedestal:

I've also noticed a similar thread in all of his novels. The most beautiful characters are always described to have coloured eyes or light hair. Hassan had 'a china-doll face' with green eyes. Laila was the most beautiful girl in her neighbourhood with her pale skin, blonde hair and big green eyes. Assef was handsome because of his blonde hair, blue eyes and 'Germanic' appearence. Mariam's 'redeeming feature' was her green eyes. Masooma, the beautiful twin, has big, glittering sapphire eyes whereas Parwana has dull brown eyes. It reads a lot like the way Afghans are fetishised by the West- and I say this as someone who used to have these features in my childhood. It's weird af. Dark features are beautiful too.

Either way, the obsession with fair features is kind of gross. Yes, some of us have blonde hair, black hair, red hair, brown hair. Some of us have blue or green eyes. Some of us have pale skin, tanned skin, dark skin. But I will say this- most of us don't have light eyes and hair. I really hate the emerging trend of white people and even Afghans worshipping these God-given traits when the vast majority of us don't have these features. Are only white-passing, blonde haired Afghans with coloured eyes beautiful? Sad message to pass down to the next generation.

Finally, his most grievous offence which has caused the most issues for Afghans as a whole was his support for the Bush administration and the endorsement of the American war into Afghanistan.

TLDR:

Mishandling ethnic tensions between Pashtuns and Hazaras in such a way that both groups denounced his book in Afghanistan for stoking violence

Hazaras are almost always written out of his novels by getting killed off or getting raped

Portraying Hazaras as meek servants, rape victims or promiscuous- why are they always tortured in his novels? Can't Hazaras be strong characters for once?

Portraying Pashtuns as child abusers, Taliban or drunkards (he addressed this in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' with Tariq)

Going out of his way to recruit child actors from Afghanistan without considering that their roles could get them killed

Production pressurising said child to strip nude and enact a rape scene

Unlikely mixes of Afghan citizens in his novels to explain said behaviour by assigning stereotypes (ie: half German half Pashtun, must be a Nazi. Half French, half Afghan- must be promiscuous and a smoker)

Putting blue/green eyes and blonde hair on a pedestal- the majority of his 'beautiful' characters have these features

Supporting Bush and endorsing the American war which lead to countless war crimes and lives lost in Afghanistan

4.75. This book has no right to make me this sad and melancholic.

The book was good in the beginning, but towards the middle, it got boring and I was skimming through the pages.

I've read this book back in 2019 when I was in high school so I don't remember much of it, but till this day I remember the heavy feeling I've felt in my chest after reading it.

3.5 rounded down to a 3. I understand the importance of this book and I know the author is trying to show awareness of how sex workers are treated by society and by police, but the book can get a little too dark for me with on page rape of minors and mutilation of feets. I had to put it down for my own sanity. Also, the characters don't talk like normal people, they talk like they are philosophers or something like that which kind of gets annoying after reading a few hundred pages of it,.

3.5 rounding it to a 3. Pacing is way too slow and there are way too many povs. This feel like a prologue to a book and I honestly I couldn't get through it. It has potential to be good, but unfortunately I don't have the patient to see the plot unfold.

3.65

Worst thriller of all time. It was boring and the main character's paranoia made me more annoyed than sympathetic. She makes a lot of dumb decision that endangers everyone else. There was scene where she "breaks" a woman dying from cancer out of a hospital and she shits in her car?! Yea, no thanks. Oh, and I have to mention that here was also a scene where she walked in on a teenage boy masturbating to violent porn and just stayed there. Instant one star.

Honestly, this play was kind of boring and a little too long for my liking.