I was pretty sick yesterday, so I had some time to watch the movie version of The Kite Runner. I had forgotten how much I love this story. I read the Kite Runner about two years ago, and it was absolutely one of the best books that I’ve ever read. I was in Central Asia while I was reading it, so my surroundings probably amplified what I was reading…but, regardless, it’s a great book.

The picture of redemption is so vivid in the book… And even the movie does a great job portraying that. As always, they had to cut out some things from the book to make it work for a movie. But overall it felt true to what I had read years ago.

I’m not one of those people who makes a big deal about reading the book before you see the movie version. But I really would recommend doing that for The Kite Runner. There are tensions between the father and the son that I think make the book land with such potency. The tensions are still present in the movie…but not as much as in the book….I’ll shut up here, so I don’t ruin anything.

But, a word of warning: It’s a difficult book to read and movie to watch. A lot of terrible things happened when the Taliban had control in Afghanistan, and, although the book is fictional, Khaled Hosseini paints a picture of the injustices that happened during this time.

If you’ve read the book and seen the movie I’d love to know what you think about the two.

Enjoy.