About this title: Sobre el telon de fondo de un Afganistan respetuoso de sus ricas tradiciones ancestrales, la vida en Kabul durante el invierno de 1975 se desarrolla con toda la intensidad, pujanza y colorido de una ciudad confiada en su propio futuro. Este libro es la conmovedora historia de dos padres y dos hijos, de su amistad, y de como la casualidad puede ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Later Printing
Binding: S Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9781594483172ISBN:1594483175
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7�"-9�" tall Movie tie in edition. Light wear and creasing to wraps. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"Terlalu berat peristiwa yang dialami oleh Hassan dan Amir pada usianya yang masih dini. Peristiwa yang membawa kisah persahabatan pada kenangan buruk di masa berikutnya. Terlalu berat bagi anak-anak seusia Amir untuk menjelaskan dan membuat keputusan ditengah doktrin Baba --sang ayah-- yang menekankan kehormatan dan kebanggaan. Permasalahan yang terlalu kompleks bagi Hassan saat diposisi sebagai pelayan...
Dan bagi Hassan, sungguh suatu sikap yang teguh dan tangguh karena tidak terseret perlakuan kelam yang pernah dialaminya. Hassan tetap mempertahankan loyalitasnya terhadap "tuannya". Hassan berusaha menjalani kehidupannya, dia tidak lari dan akan terus menghadapinya. Bahkan memaafkan.
Kenangan akan dunia bermain yang indah. Dimana nikmatnya mengejar layang-layang, membacakan sebuah cerita, berkhayal menjadi tokoh idola dan bermain sepuasnya di padang rumput adalah anugrah. Anugrah yang seharusnya menjadi kekuatan bagi Amir dan Hassan untuk menapaki usianya.
Namun demikian bagi Afghanistan, potret anak-anak ibarat sisi buram dari dunia yang terkoyak oleh konflik yang berkepanjangan. Dunia anak-anak adalah dunia yang tidak terperhatikan. Orang dewasa tak lelah bertarung dengan keyakinannya, dan anak-anak adalah bahan bakar dan komoditasnya yang larut dalam mesiu.
Dan anak-anak yang tumbuh di masa perang, ibarat layang-layang putus tanpa kendali. Membawa kisahnya terbang bersama angin. Seperti kisahnya Amir dan Hassan. Meski diantara mereka mengakui dan rindu akan saat keakraban pada masa lalu, tapi berbeda dalam menyelesaikannya. Amir berusaha lari dari masa lalu, Hassan mengenangnya sebagai bagian dari kehidupannya yang dipenuhi kesetiaaan tanpa batas sebagai seorang hamba.
Salut buat Khaled Hosseini yang telah membuat kisah menyayat dan pemaparan detail pada tokohnya. Konflik yang terjalin melalui kontruksi penyampaian yang sempurna. Bahkan, aku sempat curiga novel yang dibuatnya adalah kisah pribadinya..."
"Speechless when I'm finished this book... Cried when read Hassan's letters to Amir Adored what Hassan and Baba did to Amir Excited during my journey to Kabul Confused when I want to make a review
Hoalah....
Buku ini bikin aku nangis tengah malam, bikin aku bangun kesiangan, bikin mataku bengkak pagi-pagi, bikin gak konsen saat kerja...dan bikin aku bingung mau ngereview apa...dah menguras airmata, menguras emosi dan menguras konsentrasi...karena begitu membaca gak bisa naruh lagi bukunya....pikiran selalu kebuku ini, gak ada dalam dua hari selesai ini buku tapi mikirinnya lebih dari seminggu. Bukanmengenai Superhero, bukan mengenai kisah cinta-cinta jaman sekarang...tapi mengenai seorang Amir yang mempunyai banyak kekurangan dan kesalahan dan harus menebusnya saat dia menemukan cintanya....ehmmm.
Dah untuk sahabat-sahabatku, hanya satu dari buku ini : For you,a thousand times over!"
"This is the sort of book White America reads to feel wordly. Just like the spate of Native American pop fiction in the late eighties, this is overwhelmingly colonized literature, in that it pretends to reveal some aspect of the 'other' culture, but a closer inspection reveals that aside from the occasional tidbit, it is a western story, firmly ensconced in the western tradition. Even those tidbits Hosseini gives are of such a vague degree that to be impressed by them, one would have to have almost no knowledge of the history of Afghanistan, nor the cultural conflicts raging there between the shia and sunni Muslims. Of course, most Americans have no familiarity with either.
Hosseini's story is thickly foreshadowed and wraps up so nicely in the end that it negates the ability of the text to produce anything interesting or surprising. Every coincidence that could happen, does happen. He attempts to wrangle in the reader's interest despite this, usually with dramatized violence. He is also fond of forcing tension by creating a small conflict between two characters and then having them agonize over it for years. This would not be problematic in itself, except that the conflict does not grow or change over time, leaving the characters' reactions petty and repetitive.
He even creates a cliched 'white devil' character, a literal sociopath (and pedophile) as the symbol for the 'evils' of the Taliban. This contrasts oddly since book does not shy away from representing the simple inequalities and pointless conflicts which stem from Afghan tradition, itself. His indelicate inclusion of wealthy, beautiful, white power as the source of religious turmoil in the mid-east negates his hints that the conflicts are caused by small-mindedness.
The sad part about this book is that it will allow white America both to feel sympathy with the mid-east conflict, and also to retain a sense of superiority over the Muslims and their 'backwards, classicist, warlike' ways. Even after all of that, they will not really have come to any understanding of the vast and vital economic concerns which have made the mid-east so important to the future of the world.
It is unfortunate that nowhere amongst this book's artfully dramatized violence or its alternative praising and demonizing of the West is there the underlying sense of why this conflict is happening, of what put it all into place, and of why it will continue to drag us all down. The point where we could turn our sympathy into indignation or realization is simply absent.
There is a meme on the internet showing a map of the world with the mid-east replaced by a sea-filled crater with the comment 'problem solved'. What this map fails to represent is that there is a reason the west keeps meddling in the affairs of the mid-east, and that every time we do, it creates another conflict. As long as we see the Taliban as faceless sociopaths, we can do nothing against them. We must recognize that normal people fall down these paths, and that everyone sees himself as being 'in the right'. So who is more right: a Westerner who bombs a child, or a Muslim who does?
The point shouldn't be to separate the 'good Muslims' from the 'bad Muslims', because people aren't fundamentally good or bad. They are fundamentally people. Almost without exception, they are looking out for their future, their children, and their communities. Calling someone 'evil' merely means you have ceased to try understanding their point of view, and decided instead to merely hate for hatred's sake.
This book isn't particularly insightful or well-written, but that is in no way remarkable from bestsellers. The problem is that Americans are going to use this book to justify their ignorance about the problems in the east. This book will make people feel better about themselves, instead of help them to think better about the world."
"i really wanted to like this novel. judging from its thousands of 'five-star reviews' hailing it as the one of the 'best books ever written,' i'm in the minority when i state that this novel, while well-intentioned, just left a little bit of sour taste in my mouth.
my problems with the novel are as follows: first of all the writing itself is so ham-fistened, heavy-handed, distracting and otherwise puzzling that by the midway point, i seriously considered chucking the book against the wall. each page of the novel has at least 5-10 incomplete sentences. i'm all for experimental and fractered prose--but it's important for authors to use it judiciously. hosseini, unfortunately, beats it to death. a lot of his language is cliched, too, which is funny considering there's a passage in the book about a writing teacher who warns the narrator, amir, about using cliches. i don't know if that was supposed to be funny or not, but it made me laugh (and what was worse was the san francisco's chronicle's glowing review on the book's cover and the san francisco chronicle's glowing review of amir's novel--coincidence?).
the author's use of farsi--especially in the dialogue--was equally distracting. my point is that no one speaks the way his characters speak. people don't switch back and forth between languages while speaking, and if they do, they certainly don't speak 1/2 the sentence in english, say one word in farsi, then traslate the farsi word to english, then finish the sentence in english, when they're presumably speaking farsi to begin with. i didn't pick up this book for a crash course in colloquial farsi. after 370 pages, i was frustrated--and annoyed.
hosseini's plot often borders on the ridiculous. the'twists' are just TOO coincidental--and not surprising at all (except in how contrived they are). for example, in a devasted kabul, amir sees a homeless man in the street. the homeless man, of course, was a former university professor who just happened to teach with amir's long deceased mother. what a coincidence! what makes it worse, is that the narrator, amir then explains that while that may, in fact, seem like a coincidence, it happens in afghanistan happens all the time. of course it does. in another example, amir's former nemesis, assaf (now a taliban crony), beats up amir and amir ends up with a scar above his lip, just like his dear friend hassan, who was born with cleft-pallet. oh, the coincidence! (and the fact that amir even runs into assef again is ridiculous). another example: amir and his wife aren't able to have children, and of course they find an orphan boy who happens to be extended family and they adopt him. what a coincidence! and after amir returns to afghanistan he doesn't call home to his dutiful wife for over a month. i kept wondering 'when's he gonna call home?' and any plot advanced by a series of 'tragedies,' (and in this book they are legion) shows little more than the writer's inability to craft a meaningful and interesting plot. not only is it pretty poor form, it's also highly manipulative and condescending. i found myself continually frustrated by hosseini's apparent distrust of the reader. we don't have to be told how and when to interpret metaphors. and if i read one more book where the protagonist is a writer or professor, i'm gonna ram my head into a metal post.
i don't want to sound like a misanthrope or jaded literature reader because i'm certainly not. this novel just left me wanting so much more in terms of plot and characterization. having said that, however, the novel could be important in that shows the cruelty of the taliban. much of what hosseini writes about is important, especially for us westerners unfamiliar with the breadth and scope of the afghani tragedy.
in the end, it was worth the $2.00 i paid for it."
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