The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Not since childhood have I been so consumed by a work of literature. I initiated contact by opening the book; then the words leapt from the page and transported me across the world to an unknown land. My senses were overloaded with the realities of this place too distant to be real, too startling to be imaginary, replete with ripe fruit bubbling summer joys, cloudless and colorful winter skies, fallen Adams on cold autumn ground…I felt every character’s conflicting emotions like so many of my own, loving and loathing parts of myself in a boy--then man--I heard about but never met. I moved through the pages according to their rhythm, the prose at once fresh and soothing, fierce and subjugating. As the journey neared its end, some loose ones were tied in such perfect bows they disrupted the natural meter I had come to know. But in life I’ve learned to accept even the expected unexpected. In all, The Kite Runner is a 324 page sojourn through heaven, hell, and all the shared space in between that is worth every minute it takes to read it “a thousand times over.”