<P> Meghan O'Rouke, Slate Magazine's culture critic and advisory editor, ultimately found The Kite Runner mediocre, writing, "This is a novel simultaneously striving to deliver a large - scale informative portrait and to stage a small - scale redemptive drama, but its therapeutic allegory of recovery can only undermine its realist ambitions . People experience their lives against the backdrop of their culture, and while Hosseini wisely steers clear of merely exoticizing Afghanistan as a monolithically foreign place, he does so much work to make his novel emotionally accessible to the American reader that there is almost no room, in the end, for us to consider for long what might differentiate Afghans and Americans ." Sarah Smith from The Guardian thought the novel started out well but began to falter towards the end . She felt that Hosseini was too focused on fully redeeming the protagonist in Part III and in doing so created too many unrealistic coincidences that allowed Amir the opportunity to undo his past wrongs . </P> <P> The Kite Runner has been accused of' hindering' Western understanding of the Taliban by portraying its members as representatives of various social and doctrinal evils that the Taliban and their supporters do not consider typical and which they feel portray Taliban in an unfavourable light . Examples of this would be: Assef's pedophilia, Nazism, drug abuse, and sadism, and the fact that he is an executioner . The American Library Association reported that The Kite Runner was one of its most - challenged books of 2008, with multiple attempts to remove it from libraries due to its "offensive language, sexually explicit (content), and unsuit (ability for) age group ." Afghan American readers were particularly hostile towards the depiction of Pashtuns as oppressors and Hazaras as the oppressed . Hosseini responded in an interview, "They never say I am speaking about things that are untrue . Their beef is,' Why do you have to talk about these things and embarrass us? Don't you love your country?"' </P> <P> The film generated more controversy through the 30 - second rape scene, with threats made against the child actors, who originated from Afghanistan . Zakria Ebrahimi, the 12 - year - old actor who portrayed Amir, had to be removed from school after his Hazara classmates threatened to kill him, and Paramount Pictures was eventually forced to relocate three of the children to the United Arab Emirates . Afghanistan's Ministry of Culture banned the film from distribution in cinemas or DVD stores, citing the possibility that the movie's ethnically charged rape scene could incite racial violence within Afghanistan . </P> <P> Four years after its publication, The Kite Runner was adapted as a motion picture starring Khalid Abdalla as Amir, Homayoun Ershadi as Baba, and Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada as Hassan . It was initially scheduled to premiere in November 2007, but the release date was pushed back six weeks to evacuate the Afghan child stars from the country after they received death threats . Directed by Marc Forster and with a screenplay by David Benioff, the movie won numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award, the BAFTA Film Award, and the Critics Choice Award in 2008 . While reviews were generally positive, with Entertainment Weekly deeming the final product "pretty good", the depiction of ethnic tensions and the controversial rape scene drew outrage in Afghanistan . Hangama Anwari, the child rights commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, commented, "They should not play around with the lives and security of people . The Hazara people will take it as an insult ." </P>

How does the main character change in the kite runner