In the following review, O'Brien discusses the author's use of voice, and how the two main characters reflect the character of Afghanistan itself.
Rare is the exiled author whose remembrances of home resist becoming rose-tinted as the years pass. Given the ravages visited on Afghanistan since the young Khaled Hosseini and his family sought political asylum in the United States in 1980, the foremost of many triumphs in this startling first novel must be that its consideration of cultural, religious and deeply personal upheavals remains cool and considered throughout. Hosseini's own profession—he is a doctor—perhaps provides a more convincing explanation of his narrator's unemotional tone than the fictional claim that he has become an English-language author of some repute.
Amir is twelve when the novel begins in 1975, but the seeds of his story were sown.....
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