The Kite Runner

The Kabul of a boy's memory before the wars: the walled gardens and quiet embassy streets of the affluent Wazir Akbar Khan district, a hill where kites fight over the rooftops each winter, and the lake west of the city where families picnic. The same places return years later scarred by Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule, when a stadium becomes a killing ground.

Amir

Baba's house, Wazir Akbar Khan

Chapters 1-3

The story opens in the comfortable childhood home of the narrator, a wealthy merchant's son, in one of Kabul's richest districts. The friendship between the boy and the servant's son who grows up beside him sets the guilt that drives the whole book. Wazir Akbar Khan is a real northern quarter of large villas and, later, foreign embassies.

Chapter 3

inferred The novel places the family's grand house in the affluent Wazir Akbar Khan district but gives no address; the house itself is invented. Sited at the district centre as a representative point.

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