Edward Wyatt reviews The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, in The New York Times:
“The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, a previously unknown son of an Afghan political refugee, has captivated reading groups across the country with its rich mix of familiar morality tale and timely world history. Without any significant national publicity – no recommendation by Oprah Winfrey or a morning television show, no superstar author backed by a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign – the book has steadily climbed the best-seller lists, rising as high as No. 5 on the paperback best-seller list of The New York Times and selling more than 500,000 copies in seven months, a significant achievement for a literary novel.
It has done so thanks to the word-of-mouth recommendations of librarians and book sellers and on the strength of local book clubs, like the one here in Palm Beach, as well as community reading programs, where one book is chosen by a city or region, like eastern Connecticut or the central California valley.
More here.
