Grzegorz Chudy Chudy থেকে Adstock, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire MK18, UK
I really loved this book - it captivated me completely after the turning point, a few chapters in. The best parts of the book are the alternately heartwarming/heartwrending relationship between the two main characters, and how guilt and selfishness are lived with/worked around/dealt with by the main character. It's a story we all can relate to, which may surprise you if you are assuming this book is going to be dry and political in nature, which I did. I have to admit that after finishing reading it today, I went out for a walk and couldn't resist going inside 2 of the Middle Eastern stores/bakeries in my neighborhood to look around. I saw everything in the store in a whole different way. The book has truly opened my mind and eyes to Middle Eastern cultures. Before, when I might have entered a store like that, I would have looked around and had no connection to or understanding of the different food, decorative, and clothing items that make up meaningful parts of those cultures, except for the few items I'm familiar with. Today, I looked at everything in wonder, thinking about Amir and Baba and Hassan and how they used/ate/experienced the different things I was seeing, and what they meant to those characters. It struck me as a really happy coincidence that just a few hours earlier, I was reading about how one of the characters was eating "roasted watermelon seeds", and I thought, "Wow, that sounds really odd/gross/strange...", but then I saw a big barrel of them in one of the stores - "Watermelon Seeds - $1.97/lb." They were huge and brown and not the watermelon seeds I'm used to. It was a delightful "aha" moment - I smiled when I recognized this connection. Other people must have thought I was a weirdo, smiling at watermelon seeds... But it made me happy to think that in this fictional character's life, eating watermelon seeds was a single nostalgic memory from a beautiful childhood. And that I can definitely relate to.