The Kite Runner, coming out shortly after the Afghanistan war, was both topical and sentimental, the kind of book Oprah could easily recommend. The same trend is propelling the much better-written The Reluctant Fundamentalist up the charts and making the careers of pundits like Asra Nomani and Reza Aslan. Americans are suddenly interested in Why They Hate Us.

On the theory that sales equal quality, Khaled Hosseini has become the go-to blurb writer for books related to Afghanistan. His quotes have spread their wings over the entire South Asia section. A quote from Kite Runner even appears on the back of a translation of the Persian classic Shahnama.

But I disliked Kite Runner for its groan-inducing melodrama. It starts out promising enough but ends up the literary version of The Bad News Bears, trashy Bollywood scripts and badly-written Indian serials. Some scenes here aren’t written like a novel, they’re literally written like bad TV. The book even relies on a fortuneteller scene to move the plot forward, a cliché even soap operas would hang their heads in shame at using.

The novel has no concept of foreshadowing, giving away the entire tale 50 pages in advance. Like The Impressionist and My Name is Red, books I read around the same time, anal rape is a climactic MacGuffin. Ass-fucking is the new hysterical blindness.

The book’s saving grace is its account of the exiled Afghan-American community in Fremont, California, the city otherwise known as a yuppie desi ghetto.

Hosseini is reading from his next book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, 7pm May 22 at Barnes & Noble Union Square, Manhattan. That day is also the official release date:

Mariam, the harami (bastard) daughter of a middle class father and the hysterical mother his several wives force out of his household. Upon the mother’s suicide, the child is forcibly married to a much older and unpleasant cobbler from Kabul, who views her as nothing more than a brood sow.

The tale shifts to the late ’80s and nine-year old Laila, spoiled by her intellectual father, but nearly ignored by the mother who pines away for the two sons who are away fighting with the mujahadeen. The lives of the two women are set against the backdrop of a Kabul that suffers under the Soviets, communists, mujahadeen, Taliban and, finally, the post-9/11 regime change. [Link]

The publisher is trying to pull off a blockbuster sequel with a cover virtually identical to the previous book’s look. It could be better than the first. Then again, it could be Howard the Duck 2. But wait, it gets worse:

The Kite Runner has been adapted into a film of the same name with a release date in November, 2007… Movie rights [to A Thousand Splendid Suns] have been acquired by… Columbia Pictures… [Link]

Your bad-movie-watching dollar will soon be stretched thin.