Introduction

Hosseini: The Kite Runner

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. We begin with a broad introduction to the historical, political and literary context of the novel, before going through the whole novel chapter-by-chapter, providing close reading and detailed analysis, with commentary on character, plot, themes, motifs, language, symbolism and more.

Introduction

In this module, we provide a broad introduction to the novel and some of its themes, focusing in particular on: (i) the long history of the Bildungsroman, e.g. Jane Eyre (1847), David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1861), and the extent to which The Kite Runner belongs in this genre; (ii) the relationship between Amir and Hassan; (iii) the extent to which the ending of the novel is typical of the Bildungsroman genre; (iv) the importance of narrators and narratives in the novel – stories, lies, myths, propaganda, etc.; (v) the importance of the gap in time between Amir’s childhood (1975) and the present day (2001); (vi) the importance of the ethnic difference between Amir and Hassan; (vii) the idea of ‘what might have been’; (viii) the extent to which Hassan’s ‘invasion’ by Assef is an echo of Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; and (ix) the idea of the American Dream novel, and the extent to which the Kite Runner fits this genre.