The book's Afghan author is in the Ocean State for two days of public appearances as part of a program that promotes the statewide reading of a single, common book.

08:25 AM EDT on Friday, May 6, 2005

BY MICHAEL CORKERY
Journal Staff Writer

NEWPORT -- When Khaled Hosseini sat down to write The Kite Runner, he never imagined what one novel about two boys from Afghanistan could do.

Amid all the glowing reviews, the top spot on The New York Times Best Seller list and a movie proposal, what stands out to Hosseini is an e-mail from a reader in the American Midwest.

The reader told Hosseini that The Kite Runner inspired him to adopt an Afghan child.

"It's very surreal to see how a story you made up and wrote down can have an impact like that," Hosseini said yesterday. "To me, that was stunning."

A first-time novelist and Afghan immigrant, Hosseini, 40, is a publishing sensation.

He has been traveling around the United States for nearly two years, reading in schools, signing in bookstores, both large and small, and speaking at public libraries.

This week, Hosseini is taking his story to Rhode Island, as part of a statewide program, called Reading Across Rhode Island. He will speak to local students and local businesses in a video conference this morning and attend a public picnic in Westerly later in the day.

Tomorrow, he speaks to a group of 800 at a breakfast at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, in Cranston. There's a sign under the Big Blue Bug on Route 95 that asks: Have you Read The Kite Runner yet?

"Wow, I never thought my book would be advertised by a cockroach," said Hosseini, who lives in San Jose, Calif.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Now a resident of California, Khaled Hosseini signs copies of his book after a speaking engagement at the Newport Public Library.

Reading Across Rhode Island, now in its third year, has an ambitious goal: to get as many people as possible in the state reading the same book at the same time.

Like community reading programs in Seattle and Chicago, the Rhode Island initiative aims to spark book discussions, "at the doctor's office, on the bus or in the supermarket," said Pat LaRose, the head of reference and adult services at the Newport Public Library.

More than 75 people went to the Newport library yesterday to listen to Hosseini and sip sugary tea and snack on an Afghan staples of naan, nuts and honey. Last night, Hosseini spoke at Roger Williams University, where the president's wife, Paula Nirschel, is an honorary co-chair of Reading Across Rhode Island. Program organizers have a Web site, www.readingacrossri.org, with links to such things as Afghan recipes and information about kites.

The Kite Runner is both an exploration of Afghan culture and a story that touches on the universal.

It opens in Kabul in the 1970s, before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan triggered two decades of nearly constant war.

Amir, a middle-class boy, and Hassan, the son of a servant, are close friends, living in the peaceful and fairly cosmopolitan Afghan capital.

The boys love to fight kites -- an Afghan tradition in which young competitors try to cut the string of rival kite fliers. There's a sweetness and humility to the characters that seems to capture the spirit of pre-war Afghanistan.

But in a startling cruel and ugly moment, Amir betrays Hassan, and their childish innocence is lost.

The Soviets invade Afghanistan in December 1979. Amir moves with his father to California, while Hassan remains behind.

But like Edgar Allen Poe's telltale heart, Amir's betrayal of his friend follows him into adulthood. He returns to Afghanistan, seeking redemption at the height of the Taliban regime.

Beyond its historical context, the novel poses universal questions and quandaries.

Julie Janson brought her dog-eared copy of The Kite Runner to the Newport Public Library, looking for an autograph and an answer to a question. She sat in the front row with her mother, who drove from Marblehead, Mass., to hear Hosseini.

Janson wanted to know: "What are we supposed to think of Amir?"

In returning to Afghanistan, she asked, is Amir motivated by guilt or a genuine desire to make things right. "I don't know if I liked the protagonist," she said.

Hosseini said he wanted his characters to be full of surprises. He started writing The Kite Runner months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks turned America's attention to Afghanistan, the faraway country that had been largely ignored after the Soviet defeat.

The Kite Runner is not an obviously political novel, but the theme of betrayal -- and specifically the book's brutal rape scene -- mirrors the struggles of modern-day Afghanistan, Hosseini said.

"I tried to make a statement larger than what was going on [in the book]," Hosseini said. "What happened after the Soviet war is that the world just kind of packed its bags and went home and watched as the Afghans were brutalized."

Hosseini says the book is sprinkled with stories and experiences from his life.

The author left Kabul as a boy in 1976 when his father, an Afghan diplomat, moved his family to Paris. The Soviet invasion kept the family from returning to Afghanistan, so they moved to California, where many Afghans had resettled.

Hosseini became a medical doctor and wrote in his spare time. He has a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. The Kite Runner started as a short story that sat unpublished for years, until his wife dusted it off and gave it to her father-in-law to read.

He suggested Hosseini expand the story. The author returned to Kabul for the first time since he was 11, in March 2003. The Kite Runner was published a few months later.

The book has never been bestowed the kind of star endorsement that can spark a publishing success. For instance, Hosseini has not appeared on Oprah, The Today Show or Charlie Rose.

Hosseini attributes the book's popularity to word-of-mouth recommendations. Most women tell him they read it in their book clubs. Men tell him that "their wives recommended it to them."

A big boost came from community-wide reading programs, such as the one in Rhode Island this week and in such other locales as Pittsboro, N.C., and Winnetka, Ill.

The publisher, Riverhead Books, has shipped 1.5 million paperback copies of The Kite Runner and it has twice hit the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list.

Louise Moulton, the staff director of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, which organized Reading Across Rhode Island, said one book group at the Providence Public Library talked about the book for two hours one night.

She recalled seeing a cashier in a liquor store reading The Kite Runner behind the register. Students at Woonsocket High School who read the book raised $200 for an Afghan primary school, she said.

"I couldn't believe people's connection to the book," she said.

Digital Extra: Have you read The Kite Runner? Share your review of the book, at:

http://projo.com/kiterunnersurvey