1,300 Area High School Students Will Hear 'The Kite Runner' Author Speak

BUFFALO, N.Y. – More than 1,300 Western New York high school students will be guests of the University at Buffalo at a lecture by Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner," the harrowing and heartbreaking tale of two young Afghanistani boys caught in the nightmare of their country's destruction.

Hosseini's talk at 8 p.m. on Oct. 16 in Alumni Arena on the UB North (Amherst) Campus is part of UB's Distinguished Speaker Series lecture series.

UB will host students from about 50 area high schools as part of the community education component of UB Reads, which promotes discussion of topics of global impact through a shared reading experience.

"The Kite Runner" was given this fall to all new UB freshman, transfer and international students through the UB Reads program. In addition, about 1,500 copies of the novel were given to returning UB upperclassmen and graduate students.

The book was discussed in most UB 101 fall orientation classes and UB students were encouraged to read the book outside their regular studies as a way to promote critical thinking and facilitate engaging discussions among faculty, staff, students and families around a common theme.

UB also sponsored an "expressions contest" that encouraged students to submit visual artwork – drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, short films – inspired by the book. The students' work will be displaced in the lobby of Alumni Arena prior to Hosseini's lecture and winners will be announced to the lecture audience.

A free public screening of the film, "The Kite Runner," will be held Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. in the Student Union Theater and a post-film discussion will be hosted by the Undergraduate Academies' Office.

"The Kite Runner," the first Afghanistani novel to be written English, is the devastating and unforgettable story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, set in a modern Afghanistan as it is being driven to ruin, first by the Russians, then by the Taliban, then by the current war. The film based on the book has won a number of awards, and the book, so emotionally gripping and beautifully written, is poised to be a classic novel about fathers and sons, the meaning of friendship, the price of betrayal and the possibility of redemption.

Like Hosseini, many of the authors of UB Reads selections are invited to speak as part of the university's annual Distinguished Speaker Series, the most recent being Ishmael Beah, author of "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier;" Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," and the His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

For additional information about UB reads, go to .http://www.student-affairs.buffalo.edu/nsp/readub