I advise...

Sometimes a book takes over your mind. It makes you dream about places and people, totally different than the ones you know. This happened to me with The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, a book that all my dutch friends had read already and advised me to read. I waited a bit, I am generally suspicious of things everyone tells me I should read.
But for The Kite Runner the compliments are fully deserved. It is indeed a book that grips you from the first page. It’s so well written, that it makes me want to write again. It inspires me. At some points it makes you laugh, at others cry, and it definitely stays with you. When you finish it, it leaves a void, like a friend you won’t see for a long time, or maybe ever again.
It tells about the story of two childhood friends in Kabul, Afghanistan, pre-Soviet invasion. It tells about children growing up, how they yearn for their parents’ love, and how they fight for it. And then it tells us about the grown-ups these children become. It tells about a country that western culture knows from CNN stories only, and generally associates with the words “fundamentalism” and “terrorist”. I have to say now I associate Afghanistan with “kabob” and “children”. But the book does not leave out fundamentalism or terror. On the contrary, it fully exposes these for what they are: products of insanity, greed and corruption.
So this post is dedicated to The Kite Runner, the book, and to all the kite runners in Kabul. I will for sure go and see the movie, despite my fear of being totally disappointed by the contrast between what I imagined and what I will see.