12歲的阿富汗富家少爺阿米爾與仆人哈桑情同手足。然而,在一場風箏比賽后,發(fā)生了一件悲慘不堪的事,阿米爾為自己的懦弱感到自責和痛苦,逼走了哈桑,不久,自己也跟隨父親逃往美國。
成年后的阿米爾始終無法原諒自己當年對哈桑的背叛。為了贖罪,阿米爾再度踏上暌違二十多年的故鄉(xiāng),希望能為不幸的好友盡最后一點心力,卻發(fā)現(xiàn)一個驚天謊言,兒時的噩夢再度重演,阿米爾該如何抉擇?小說如此殘忍而又美麗,作者以溫暖細膩的筆法勾勒人性的本質(zhì)與救贖,讀來令人蕩氣回腸。
It took three years to build the orphanage. I was eight by then. I remember the day before the orphanage opened, Baba took me to Ghargha Lake, a few miles north of Kabul. He asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied and told him Hassan had the runs. I wanted Baba all to myself. And besides, one time at Ghargha Lake, Hassan and I were skimming stones and Hassan made his stone skip eight times. The most I managed was five. Baba was there, watching, and he patted Hassan on the back. Even put his arm around his shoulder.
We sat at a picnic table on the banks of the lake, just Baba and me, eating boiled eggs with "kofta" sandwiches--meatballs and pickles wrapped in "naan". The water was a deep blue and sunlight glittered on its looking glass-clear surface. On Fridays, the lake was bustling with families out for a day in the sun. But it was midweek and there was only Baba and me, us and a couple of longhaired, bearded tourists--"hippies," I'd heard them called. They were sitting on the dock, feet dangling in the water, Fishing poles in hand. I asked Baba why they grew their hair long, but Baba grunted, didn't answer. He was preparing his speech for the next day, flipping through a havoc of handwritten pages, making notes here and there with a pencil. I bit into my egg and asked Baba if it was true what a boy in school had told me, that if you ate a piece of eggshell, you'd have to pee it out. Baba grunted again.
I took a bite of my sandwich. One of the yellow-haired tourists laughed and slapped the other one on the back. In the distance, across the lake, a truck lumbered around a corner on the hill. Sunlight twinkled in its side-view mirror.
"I think I have 'saratan', " I said. Cancer. Baba lifted his head from the pages flapping in the breeze. Told me I could get the soda myself, all I had to do was look in the trunk of the car.