I finished reading "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini, on Christmas Day and it was sometimes a trying experience. Hosseini and his protagonist both grew up in Afghanistan (pre-Soviet, pre-mujaheddin) and both emigrated to the US. Add to this the author’s talents and I found myself worrying about him, his friends and family. I forgot that this is a novel, not an autobiography.
"The Kite Runner" (Riverhead, 2003) has been a popular success, I read somewhere, and I understand why. The story is riveting, the themes universal and they play out against the background of an exotic land that has only recently made headlines.
So why I am telling you all this? Journalism - even good journalism - runs a poor second to fiction in telling truths. I learned a heckuva lot about Afghanistan as it was and is from "The Kite Runner". I recommend it.