12岁的阿富汗富家少爷阿米尔与仆人哈桑情同手足。然而，在一场风筝比赛后，发生了一件悲惨不堪的事，阿米尔为自己的懦弱感到自责和痛苦，逼走了哈桑，不久，自己也跟随父亲逃往美国。
成年后的阿米尔始终无法原谅自己当年对哈桑的背叛。为了赎罪，阿米尔再度踏上暌违二十多年的故乡，希望能为不幸的好友尽最后一点心力，却发现一个惊天谎言，儿时的噩梦再度重演，阿米尔该如何抉择？小说如此残忍而又美丽，作者以温暖细腻的笔法勾勒人性的本质与救赎，读来令人荡气回肠。
As confided to a neighbor 8217;s servant by the garrulous midwife, who had then in turn told anyone who would listen, Sanaubar had taken one glance at the baby in Ali 8217;s arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter.
8220;There, 8221; she had said. 8220;Now you have your own idiot child to do all your smiling for you! 8221; She had refused to even hold Hassan, and just five days later, she was gone.
Baba hired the same nursing woman who had fed me to nurse Hassan. Ali told us she was a blue-eyed Hazara woman from Bamiyan, the city of the giant Buddha statues. 8220;What a sweet singing voice she had, 8221;he used to say to us.
What did she sing, Hassan and I always asked, though we already knew 8211;Ali had told us countless times. We just wanted to hear Ali sing.
He 8217;d clear his throat and begin:
8220;On a high mountain I stood,
And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.
O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men,
Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts. 8221;
Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.
Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.
Mine was 8220;Baba 8221;.
His was 8220;Amir 8221;. My name.
Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975—and all that followed—was already laid in those first words.