I enjoyed it even if it was a little on the melancholy side. I’m usually wary of books that are all the rage, my tastes usually differ from the crowd. Not this time. My favorite part was Hosseni’s depiction of childhood in Afghanistan. I got the feeling that he really enjoyed writing about it, infusing a lot of his own memories into the storyline. There’s nothing better than passionate, personal writing.

Afghanistan has come up a lot recently. I saw Charlie Wilson’s War the other night. The dialog was amazing. I wish my life were like that: a string of witty comments and outrageous situations… The next day Benazir Bhutto was killed and news of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan flooded the 24 hour cable news. All this pushed me to find my grandparents pictures of the country. Just before the Soviet invasion they drove from Islamabad to Kabol in a single afternoon.

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