When Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini published his first novel, The Kite Runner, in 2003, he took the world by storm. Coming at a moment when international interest in Afghanistan was intense, Hosseni's tale shot to the top of the international best-seller list, and was hailed as a watershed moment not only for literature, but also for global understanding of a war-torn nation. Isabel Allende called The Kite Runner "one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years," noting that it contains "all the great themes of literature and of life ... love, honor, guilt, fear, redemption." Entertainment Weekly called it "a moving portrait of modern Afghanistan," and the New York Times Book Review wrote that the novel "reminds us how long [Hosseini's] people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence--forces that continue to threaten them even today."
Now the movie is out--and it promises to be just as spectacular, and just as important (Roger Ebert calls it "magnificent"). The only problem is that there are crucial audiences who will never see it. Variety reports that the Afghan government has banned the film because it contains graphic scenes of a rape and represents ethnic conflict. Nothing like a little state-mandated censorship to underscore the importance of art such as Hosseini's.