The Edusites Guide to Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner'.
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Setting, Context and Timelines
The novel takes place as Amir's retrospective in March 2002 of the events he recounts in the first and last chapters of the novel. These moments of retrospection are set in Fremont, San Francisco in an area which contains a community of Afghan refugees. One of the main issues, then, is memory, which in Amir's case is sharply intense and largely unhappy because it is suffused with guilt. He speaks of America as a place which is like a river: a place where experience flows into the future and the past recedes, where memories can be buried. But, as his narrative persistently suggests, in his case they cannot. He can, he learns, only achieve atonement by redeeming himself by re-visiting Kabul, facing his demons and extirpating his guilt for his appalling betrayal of Hassan in 1975.
This is the critical year of the novel.