The Kite Runner

 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, 372 pages.

Amir and Hassan (the son of his father's servant) are best friends and the kings of Kabul (or at least that's what they tell themselves. They go through the trials and tribulations that many young boys do, but everything changes when Hassan goes through something much worse, and everything breaks between them. And then things quickly start breaking all across Afghanistan, as war and political unrest force Amir and his father to immigrate to America. Decades later Amir gets a call in California calling him home, and promising that he can atone for his past. What follows is a harrowing journey to a city full of memories.

It took me a really long time to figure out how to write about this book, and I still don't think I did it justice. It's a story with a lot going on, both plot-wise and structurally. It's a novel about stories that can't seem to stop, and about human connections, and justice, and also about Afghanistan. It's extremely well-done and emotionally difficult to read and I would definitely recommend it. This has been on my to-read list for literally a decade now and I'm very glad I finally got to it.