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Characters

• Amir — the main protagonist, narrator of the novel, said to be born in 1963, in Kabul, who begins as a well-to-do Pashtun boy in monarchical Afghanistan and later migrates to America following the Soviet invasion. Amir is Hassan's half-brother; however, Amir does not learn of their relationship until much later in his life. Hassan never learns of the relationship.
• Hassan — a childhood friend of Amir, although Amir never explicitly admitted to this. He is described as having a China doll face, green eyes, and a cleft lip. Hassan is first thought to be the son of Ali (Baba's Hazara servant and childhood friend) and Sanaubar; later in the story, Hassan is revealed to be the illegitimate son of Baba and Sanaubar. Hassan died without ever knowing about the truth of his paternity. Hassan has always been loyal to Amir.
• Assef — a sadistic and sociopathic teenager from Amir's neighborhood in Kabul, the main antagonist. He is the son of an Afghan father and a German mother and ironically, given that he is of mixed origin, an advocate of Pashtun dominance over the Hazara. As a teenager, he rapes Hassan. After the rape, he shows up at Amir's birthday party to give him a book on his great hero, Adolf Hitler. As an adult, he repeatedly rapes Hassan's son, Sohrab, and numerous other young children of both sexes. Neither act, however, seems to be a matter of sexuality as much as of dominance, as there does not seem to be any feelings of lust, at least during Hassan's rape. Many years later, he becomes an executioner and pedophile, when he is a part of the Taliban.
• Baba — the father of Amir and Hassan. He is said to be born in the year 1933 (when the Afghan king begins his 40-year reign). He is described as a big, strong, healthy looking man with wild brown hair and beard. Baba is depicted to be of about 1.95 meter (6'5") in height. He loves throwing parties (when he had a large house and many friends in Kabul), and is known for his strength. (He is said to have fought with a black bear and won the fight, in his younger years). Baba is a successful business man and a benevolent force in the community, helping many other people establish businesses for themselves and constructing an orphanage. Holding a moral faith that considered sin only what could be explained as a form of stealing from one's fellow man, he does not endorse the kind of religiosity demanded by the clerics in the religion classed attended by Amir in school. During the book, Baba seems to be a bit disappointed in his son Amir, whom he wishes to be as much of a man as he is. However, his son only reads books and lets others fight off bullies for him. After leaving Afghanistan for America, he ages quickly and dies at fifty-three, in 1987, of cancer. He lives long enough, though, to see his son Amir marry a young Afghan woman called Soraya. Many people attend his funeral.
• Ali — Baba's servant. He had been Baba's friend since he was adopted by Baba's father, a renowned judge, after his parents had been killed by a careless driver. He is initially thought to be the father of Hassan. Before the events of the novel, he had been struck with polio, rendering his right leg useless. Because of this, Ali was constantly tormented by children in the town. He was killed by a land mine after Baba and Amir left Afghanistan.
• Rahim Khan — Baba's business partner and best friend in Afghanistan. He later tells Amir about Baba being Hassan's actual father. Amir liked him as a child, also because he was the only adult to encourage him to write, and Rahim Khan is also the one who invited Amir back to Pakistan to pick up Sohrab. Later in the story, Rahim Khan goes off alone leaving a letter to Amir telling him not to find him. He dies peacefully knowing he has successfully made Amir the man Baba wanted him to be.
• Soraya — an Afghan woman living in Fremont, California with her parents, Afghan general Taheri and his wife. She marries Amir, having met him at the weekly flea market where Amir and his father as well as the Taheris had been selling items gotten at area yard sales to improve their families' incomes (Gen. Taheri lives mainly off government welfare, considering himself too good for ordinary work and always awaiting a call back to his former position which eventually, after the overthrow of the Taliban, happens). Soraya wants to become a teacher. Before meeting Amir, she ran away with an Afghan boyfriend in Virginia, which, according to Afghan tradition, made her unsuitable for marriage. Because Amir also had his own regrets, he loved and married her anyway. Soraya desperately wants to have children but cannot conceive a child, attributed to "Unexplained Infertility".
• Sohrab — son of Hassan, traumatized and repeatedly raped by Assef; Rahim Khan contacts Amir later in life in an attempt to get him to come back to Afghanistan to find Sohrab. In the end, he is adopted by Amir and Soraya and taken to live in the US.
• Sanaubar — Ali's wife who gives birth to Hassan as a result of an affair with Baba. She then leaves home to pursue the life of a gypsy. She might have become involved with an Afghan army soldier who nostalgically describes her "sugary little cunt" to Hassan; whether this is true or whether the soldier was just making fun of the Hazara is never established. Having paid a high physical price for her lifestyle, she later returns to Hassan in his adulthood to make up for her neglect of him when he was a child, providing a grandmother figure for Sohrab who nicknames her "Sasa".
• Farid — a bitter Tajik driver who is initially abrasive toward Amir, but later befriends him. Two of Farid's seven daughters were killed by a land mine years back, a disaster which left one of his hands mutilated and also took some of his toes. Farid is Amir's means of transport, information, and knowledge of current Afghanistan when he returns. After spending a night with Farid's brother's impoverished family, Amir hides a bundle of money under the mattress to help them: the secretive act once committed to hurt his friend Hassan, he now does to help. He is on the road to recovery.