Fundamental to the act of reading is a commitment to vicariously living within a world created by another. Reading allows us to enter into a long, unbroken conversation with the writer about the important things of life. I did just that last weekend when I read Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. Published in 2003, this story is devastating, inspiring, brutal and life-affirming all at the same time. Set largely in Afghanistan, it tells of the friendship between two young boys: one troubled and guilt-ridden; the other grounded in goodness and integrity. As the plot unfolds and you engage with the characters, the language of the text and the harrowing events of the story, the universal human experiences of betrayal, regret, love and forgiveness are powerfully explored.

The ‘energetic space’ I inhabited on the weekend, courtesy of Khaled Hosseini’s wonderful storytelling, left me altered. Young people deprived of such stories, are deprived of the opportunity to think what it might be like to be in someone else’s shoes, to be a thoughtful reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions that someone in that situation might experience. Young people deprived of stories are ultimately deprived of those moments of wonder and insight promoted by storytelling which define other people as complicated and deep, with significant differences from oneself and hidden places worthy of profound respect. I’ll finish this article with one such moment from The Kite Runner. The main character, Amir, is reflecting on the nature of forgiveness: ‘I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night’.