wordsworth
06-30-2007, 04:03 AM
Glorious flight
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published in: 2003
Pages: 324
Genre: Fiction
BY Sandhya Iyer
If I were to judge this novel by its first 100 pages, I’ll say I’ve never read anything half as good as this. It’s a portion that is narrated with such heart wrenching passion and devastating beauty that its images are bound to haunt anyone who has loved with complete devotion.
Which is exactly why, I was terribly rankled with debutant writer Khaled Hosseini for messing up the story somewhere in the middle. Finally, it starts to resemble a kind of a folk tale, with bizarre turns. For a novel that starts off so brilliantly and could have easily bagged itself a place of pride in the annals of classic Modern literature, it ends up being nothing more (or less) than popular, good fiction!
Still, it’s a novel that deserves to be read for its lingering impact and awesomely etched characters. Not to add, the fact that it is set in 1970 Afghanistan, which enables the author to take the reader into a milieu and age one knows little about.
The story is about Amir (who serves as the author’s alter ego) and his loving servant-friend Hassan. Their childhood appears a picture of bliss, though Hosseini constantly draws our attention to the fixed power equation between the two. While Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, Hassan is not only poor but also cursed to be born as a Hazara (Shi’a Muslim) in a place where the community is constantly taunted and ill-treated.
Amir’s father, a generous but emotionally withdrawn man, treats Hassan with unusual kindness. The latter, in turn, shows undying devotion and love to his little master (Amir).
The author, who quite obviously, has a penchant for irony as a literary device (and he even mentions this through one of his characters), uses it excessively all through the novel. Here, he employs it to bring out the slightly perverted streak in Amir’s character, something which all of us are probably guilty of at some point in life.
Amir knows Hassan’s unstinted love for him and hence loves to tease him.
‘Would I ever lie to you Amir agha?’
Suddenly, I decided to toy with him a little. ‘I don’t know. Would you?’
‘I’d sooner eat dirt,” he said with a look of indignation.
‘Really? You’d do that?”
He threw a puzzled look. “Do what?”
“Eat dirt if I told you to.” I said…..
“If you asked, I would,” he finally said, looking right at me. To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.
But a great act of betrayal from Amir changes their lives forever. Hassan is brutally raped by a bunch of bullies but Amir is too scared to launch an attack and just helplessly watches on.
The guilt kills Amir slowly and it pushes him further and further into an abyss. The fact that he didn’t stand up for Hassan in his desperate hour of need fills his heart with remorse and pain.
The interesting episodes in the later half of this novel relates to Amir and his father’s great escape from Afghanistan and their stay in America, where they live modestly.
I didn’t care too much about the douzen pages dedicated to explaining Baba’s illness or even Amir’s marriage to Saroya, though they are still very readable.
In all this, the reader misses Hassan immensely and honestly, I was all set for a wonderful meeting point between the two estranged friends.
But the author has other ideas.
When Amir comes to Peshawar, at the request of his mentor-friend Rahim Khan, he comes to understand truths that both shock and unsettle him.
He learns of Hassan and his wife’s brutal murder at the hands of the Talibans, who had come to cease power by then.
Hassan’s death in the novel is something I could not accept. I mean, here was a guy who only knew how to love, to sacrifice. And frankly, being someone who believes in the idea of poetic justice, this just didn’t seem right to me.
Sadly, this choice of plot seemed more like a mandatory one, so as to allow its protagonist to redeem himself through Hassan’s orphaned son.
However, in all this, the novel’s most chilling twist, about how the boys were related in more ways than they knew, is a sheer masterstroke by Hosseini.
Ultimately, I’ll say that this is a commendable novel, extremely uplifting, with tremendous emotional power.
But again, Hosseini’s craft isn’t quite flawless here– some things are best left unsaid but the author prefers to state and re-state it.
Also, the novel falls short of creating a metaphor out of its story and characters in a convincing way.
In that sense, it’s a kite that soars high, dancing joyfully amidst the blue sky, until it is sharply cut off and cannot quite land well.
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published in: 2003
Pages: 324
Genre: Fiction
BY Sandhya Iyer
If I were to judge this novel by its first 100 pages, I’ll say I’ve never read anything half as good as this. It’s a portion that is narrated with such heart wrenching passion and devastating beauty that its images are bound to haunt anyone who has loved with complete devotion.
Which is exactly why, I was terribly rankled with debutant writer Khaled Hosseini for messing up the story somewhere in the middle. Finally, it starts to resemble a kind of a folk tale, with bizarre turns. For a novel that starts off so brilliantly and could have easily bagged itself a place of pride in the annals of classic Modern literature, it ends up being nothing more (or less) than popular, good fiction!
Still, it’s a novel that deserves to be read for its lingering impact and awesomely etched characters. Not to add, the fact that it is set in 1970 Afghanistan, which enables the author to take the reader into a milieu and age one knows little about.
The story is about Amir (who serves as the author’s alter ego) and his loving servant-friend Hassan. Their childhood appears a picture of bliss, though Hosseini constantly draws our attention to the fixed power equation between the two. While Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, Hassan is not only poor but also cursed to be born as a Hazara (Shi’a Muslim) in a place where the community is constantly taunted and ill-treated.
Amir’s father, a generous but emotionally withdrawn man, treats Hassan with unusual kindness. The latter, in turn, shows undying devotion and love to his little master (Amir).
The author, who quite obviously, has a penchant for irony as a literary device (and he even mentions this through one of his characters), uses it excessively all through the novel. Here, he employs it to bring out the slightly perverted streak in Amir’s character, something which all of us are probably guilty of at some point in life.
Amir knows Hassan’s unstinted love for him and hence loves to tease him.
‘Would I ever lie to you Amir agha?’
Suddenly, I decided to toy with him a little. ‘I don’t know. Would you?’
‘I’d sooner eat dirt,” he said with a look of indignation.
‘Really? You’d do that?”
He threw a puzzled look. “Do what?”
“Eat dirt if I told you to.” I said…..
“If you asked, I would,” he finally said, looking right at me. To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.
But a great act of betrayal from Amir changes their lives forever. Hassan is brutally raped by a bunch of bullies but Amir is too scared to launch an attack and just helplessly watches on.
The guilt kills Amir slowly and it pushes him further and further into an abyss. The fact that he didn’t stand up for Hassan in his desperate hour of need fills his heart with remorse and pain.
The interesting episodes in the later half of this novel relates to Amir and his father’s great escape from Afghanistan and their stay in America, where they live modestly.
I didn’t care too much about the douzen pages dedicated to explaining Baba’s illness or even Amir’s marriage to Saroya, though they are still very readable.
In all this, the reader misses Hassan immensely and honestly, I was all set for a wonderful meeting point between the two estranged friends.
But the author has other ideas.
When Amir comes to Peshawar, at the request of his mentor-friend Rahim Khan, he comes to understand truths that both shock and unsettle him.
He learns of Hassan and his wife’s brutal murder at the hands of the Talibans, who had come to cease power by then.
Hassan’s death in the novel is something I could not accept. I mean, here was a guy who only knew how to love, to sacrifice. And frankly, being someone who believes in the idea of poetic justice, this just didn’t seem right to me.
Sadly, this choice of plot seemed more like a mandatory one, so as to allow its protagonist to redeem himself through Hassan’s orphaned son.
However, in all this, the novel’s most chilling twist, about how the boys were related in more ways than they knew, is a sheer masterstroke by Hosseini.
Ultimately, I’ll say that this is a commendable novel, extremely uplifting, with tremendous emotional power.
But again, Hosseini’s craft isn’t quite flawless here– some things are best left unsaid but the author prefers to state and re-state it.
Also, the novel falls short of creating a metaphor out of its story and characters in a convincing way.
In that sense, it’s a kite that soars high, dancing joyfully amidst the blue sky, until it is sharply cut off and cannot quite land well.