12岁的阿富汗富家少爷阿米尔与仆人哈桑情同手足。然而，在一场风筝比赛后，发生了一件悲惨不堪的事，阿米尔为自己的懦弱感到自责和痛苦，逼走了哈桑，不久，自己也跟随父亲逃往美国。
成年后的阿米尔始终无法原谅自己当年对哈桑的背叛。为了赎罪，阿米尔再度踏上暌违二十多年的故乡，希望能为不幸的好友尽最后一点心力，却发现一个惊天谎言，儿时的噩梦再度重演，阿米尔该如何抉择？小说如此残忍而又美丽，作者以温暖细腻的笔法勾勒人性的本质与救赎，读来令人荡气回肠
In 1933, the year Baba was born and the year Zahir Shah began his forty-year reign of Afghanistan, two brothers, young men from a wealthy and reputable family in Kabul, got behind the wheel of their father 8217;s Ford roadster. High on hashish and 8220;mast 8221; on French wine, they struck and killed a Hazara husband and wife on the road to Paghman. The police brought the somewhat contrite young men and the dead couple 8217;s five-year-old orphan boy before my grandfather, who was a highly regarded judge and a man of impeccable reputation. After hearing the brothers?account and their father 8217;s plea for mercy, my grandfather ordered the two young men to go to Kandahar at once and enlist in the army for one year 8211;this despite the fact that their family had somehow managed to obtain them exemptions from the draft. Their father argued, but not too vehemently, and in the end, everyone agreed that the punishment had been perhaps harsh but fair. As for the orphan, my grandfather adopted him into his own household, and told the other servants to tutor him, but to be kind to him. That boy was Ali.
Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates 8211;at least until polio crippled Ali 8217;s leg 8211;just like Hassan and I grew up a generation later. Baba was always telling us about the mischief he and Ali used to cause, and Ali would shake his head and say, 8220;But, Agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the mischief and who the poor laborer? 8221;Baba would laugh and throw his arm around Ali.
But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend.
The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional Homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile.
Never mind any of those things. Because history isn 8217;t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi 8217;a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.
But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan. Sometimes, my entire childhood seems like one long lazy summer day with Hassan, chasing each other between tangles of trees in my father 8217;s yard, playing hide-and-seek, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, insect torture 8211;with our crowning achievement undeniably the time we plucked the stinger off a bee and tied a string around the poor thing to yank it back every time it took flight.