Khaled Hosseini (1965) was born in Afghanistan and left the country when he was eleven years old. He uses this experience as a premise for his fictional debut novel The Kite Runner about a boy from a wealthy neighbourhood in Kabul, who flees the country after the Soviet invasion.

A story like this is almost bound to be dark and depressing, but Hosseini applies a few tricks to avoid burdening his audience. He smears a thick layer of sugar over his narrative by adding feel-good elements and leaning on clichés. Sentimentality seems to be key. The novel contains some promising dilemmas and ideas and I especially appreciated the plot twist halfway through, but just when I thought the story would pick up, Hosseini kills it with his sociopath villain. I had hoped to learn from this book, but I didn’t really.