The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini
This entry was created for the Fall 2014 semester by Elizabeth Earl.
Why Banned: Bad for Gods and Government

Banning History:

The Kite Runner hovered quietly in the literary world for nearly a year before popular audiences picked up in 2005 and it subsequently spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Equally as quickly, parents and critics began protesting it for sexual content and racial themes.
Even as recent as 2012, the book is the 6th most frequently challenged novel on the American Library Association’s list of challenged books. It is 50th on the list of the ALA's most challenged books from 2000–2009, just behind One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It has not been removed from any libraries or curricula, but there are active challenges in Florida, New Jersey and Illinois; one in Wisconsin was just settled. Most of the objections are to graphic violence and graphic sexual content—there are several scenes where characters are brutally beaten and vividly described, and Hosseini discusses the topic of homosexuality and child rape with a frankness that American audiences may object to, let alone more religious and conservative audiences in Afghanistan.
Early in the book, there is an explicitly described rape scene, and throughout the book, Hosseini highlights racial tensions between the racial minority Hazaras and the ruling class of Pashtuns. In Afghanistan, it is a socioeconomic divide as well as a racial one, and is unspoken.
In 2007, the book was adapted into a film of the same name that included the same explicit rape scene. The outcry was more profound over the film—the visuals were more offensive than the words. A rumor began going around that the film would include CGI representations of the boys' genitals, and a petition was launched titled "save the 'Kite Runner' boys." The young actors began receiving death threats for the homosexuality and graphic nature of the rape scene. The Afghan government banned the film almost immediately because of the rape scene and the racial tensions, but the book is not formally banned.
Though it is not explicitly stated, the ban may also be the product of the fact that the story is also highly critical of the Taliban. Throughout, Hosseini depicts unreasonably cruel actions taken by the Taliban that cripple Afghanistan, including prohibiting women from working, forcing men to keep their beards at a particular length and stoning those accused of adultery. Hosseini makes many forceful assertions, including an outburst from the protagonist accusing a Taliban member of being immoral.

Author Bio

Khaled Hosseini (b. 1965) is an Afghani-American author. A native of Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan around which his three novels revolve, he is the oldest of five children of an Afghan Foreign Ministry official and a high school teacher. His family moved to Paris in 1976 but was unable to return due to the violence that had overtaken Afghanistan in 1980 after the Russian invasion. Instead, they relocated to the U.S. as political refugees, where Hosseini attended college in California. Though he is a native speaker of Farsi, he writes his novels in English with select Farsi words. Most of his novels carry events from his life: The characters are often displaced by the Soviet conflict, display strong family connections, relocate to the U.S. and go through education and return to Afghanistan. However, they all illuminate different parts of modern Afghani life.
In 2006, Hosseini was named a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR. He later founded the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit which provides assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
He began writing The Kite Runner while he was still practicing medicine, and after the book gained popularity, he was able to suspend his practice and go into writing full-time. He has been a vocal opponent of the Taliban and an outspoken advocate for human rights in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He has not been extremely combative about the book, but has asserted that the book's redeeming qualities outpace the offensive content. He told Salon in 2007 about the film, "I hope this controversy hasn't overshadowed the fact that this is a film about good things—about the virtues of tolerance, friendship, brotherhood and love and harmony—and that it speaks against violence." He has since spoken at multiple ALA events about the book and opposition to it, and about his two novels since.

Discussion Questions

1. Given the context of the rape scene, why do you think American audiences wanted it banned?
2. The Kite Runner is moderately autobiographical. How do you think that informs the novel’s meaning?
3. Do you think the criticism of religious radicalism is valid, or is it a criticism or political radicalism?
4. Throughout the novel, the female characters are nearly always distant or relatively unimportant, with the exception of Amir’s wife later in the book. Why do you think the author depicts the female characters this way?
5. One of the main themes is that growing up means taking on roles that you never saw yourself in because your family is a part of your identity. Is the novel a lament of what is lost or an observation that families/people groups are self-renewing over time?
6. A main contention of the novel is that the different racial groups of Afghanistan should be equal because they identify with the same culture and share a history. Are individual ethnic identities dying in the modern world because of political borders? Should they?