The Kite Runner

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering it things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

This is the novel that I saw in every bookshelf in every liberal Norwegian's home. The novel people with coffees and cigarettes read at bus-stops. The novel I had decided to dislike and never read, because to me it was a symbol of the guilty liberal conscience of Western Europe.

And then I had to read it for school.

Yes, it's about Afghanistan. It's topical, it's melodramatic, it can be used both as an argument for NATO's intervention and against the growing islamophobia on both sides of the European political spectrum.

It is also a story built on the thematic. The novel I read is about guilt, atonement, nostalgia, love, culture, morality, class and war. Especially fascinating for me was the epic conflict between Amir and Assef, the coward and the fearless, lover and fighter, creator and destroyer. This story plays out on the individual level, but I find it tempting to see it as part of a larger political context. Khaled Hosseini might have meant to write a story about a group of characters from, as any debutant author is prone to do, a culture or society he is very familiar with. Then again, these characters may be Hosseini's attempt to give a close-up of what Westerners can only experience through the media. The fate of the pure and honest Hassan echoes the fate of Afghanistan. Hosseini might have meant to say that the country was, to put it bluntly, raped by extremists and abandoned by the privileged elite.

The quote that I found most poignant comes from the very end of the novel. Amir contemplates whether forgiveness is a force of its own, a revelation or revolution that causes dramatic change, or simply the exit of the pain caused by the action forgiven. There is no way of explaining the quote other than paraphrasing it, as its meaning is clear and concise. While the war against the Taliban is as of yet still raging, it is not too early for the Afghan people to consider how best to rebuild and heal their torn and tattered nation.

Christian fantasy and fantastic Christianity

It's a well-known fact that C.S. Lewis and his famous contemporary and close friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, infused their fantasy classics with Christian symbolism. Both feature benevolent guiding figures, reminiscent of Jung's senex archetype, who sacrifice their lives for the good of the world and are rewarded with the chance to return. This nod to the Jesus myth is painfully obvious. But beside the common denominators of mutual experiences, Christian convictions, and fantasy worlds, there are a few substantial differences between the two authors that depend on two important facts: Lewis was a late convert to Anglicanism and enjoyed using metaphor and allegory, while Tolkien was a Catholic from childhood, detested allegory and restricted the use of metaphor to poetry.

Thus, while the Christian influence in Lewis' work has been the subject of much discussion and criticism, Tolkien's spirituality is left largely untouched. Tolkien's world has an all-powerful God, it has angels, one of them a fallen one, and it has a Paradise for the virtuous. And the Professor leaves it at that. Beside the Christ-like sacrifice of the wizard Gandalf, little else in his works can with accuracy be determined a Christian element. The evil in Middle-Earth isn't gluttony, lust, or sloth, but destruction and industry; the morality that guides Tolkien is environmentalist, not religious.

Lewis, on the other hand, wrote fables of morality. His religious views are blatantly expressed; we are told that vanity in a woman removes her innocence, that the Eastern God Tash (Allah) is not the same as the lion Aslan (God), and that lack of faith in the lion is a sin. As an apologist, Lewis was new to Christianity; it wasn't a natural part of his identity, as the case was with Tolkien, but a burning passion. Lewis wanted to teach his readers; Tolkien wanted to entertain them. And that has made all the difference.