The Kite Runner

Sometimes a book grabs you so much that you stick with it until the end, allowing a few breaks for eating and sleeping. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini did this for me this past weekend. It's a marvellous read, very moving, very well plotted, in fact everything you could want of a story. If you can get to the end with dry eyes I would like to know your secret.

It's about two boys growing up side by side in Kabul during the 1970s. It's about friendship, jealousy, cowardice, shame, honour, love, betrayal, redemption. If you haven't read it, drop everything until you have. You won't regret it. Remember how a few years' back you couldn't get on a tube train without seeing someone reading a copy of Captain Corelli's Mandolin? Well this is the book of the moment. It comes out as a film in November so there's not much time. Let's hope they don't wreck it as they did with Captain Corelli. With Marc Foster as director it should be in good hands.