The Kite Runner: Kabul, Exile, Return

Amir grows up in one of the finest houses in Wazir Akbar Khan, a wealthy new district in the north of Kabul. Hassan lives in the servants' hut at the bottom of the garden and is the best kite runner in the city: he knows where a cut kite will fall without looking. In the winter of 1975 Amir wins the neighbourhood kite tournament, and Hassan runs the last cut kite for him. In an alley Hassan is cornered and raped by the bully Assef. Amir watches, says nothing, and later drives Hassan and his father out of the house.

Location precision: Baba's house and the alley are not identified; the pin marks the Wazir Akbar Khan district.

To celebrate the tournament, Baba takes Amir and a convoy of relatives east to Jalalabad, on the road to the Pakistani border, for a family dinner. Amir has finally won his father's praise, but he is car-sick all the way, and at night, lying awake among the sleeping men, he whispers the truth about Hassan to nobody. Jalalabad returns in March 1981, when Baba and Amir pass through as refugees after the Soviet invasion and learn that the truck meant to take them on to Pakistan doesn't exist.

Location precision: The novel names only the city; the pin marks central Jalalabad.

The last leg of the 1981 escape is made in the dark, airless tank of a fuel truck; a boy among the refugees dies on the way, and his father kills himself when they arrive in Peshawar. Twenty years later, in June 2001, the city calls Amir back: Baba's old friend Rahim Khan, dying here, phones him in California — "There is a way to be good again" — and tells him the truth. Hassan was Baba's son, Amir's half-brother; he has been killed by the Taliban, and his boy Sohrab is in a Kabul orphanage.

Location precision: The novel doesn't identify Rahim Khan's flat; the pin marks central Peshawar.

In California the once-powerful Baba pumps gas in Fremont, and on Sundays father and son sell used goods at the flea market in San Jose, where Afghan exiles trade goods, gossip and politics. Here Amir notices Soraya, the daughter of an Afghan general, and courts her across the aisles under her father's stern eye. Baba, by then dying of cancer, asks the general for her hand on Amir's behalf. Amir studies writing at San Jose State and becomes a novelist.

Location precision: The novel doesn't name the market; the pin marks the San Jose Flea Market on Berryessa Road.

Back in a Kabul he barely recognises, Amir learns that a Taliban official has taken Sohrab from the orphanage. To find the man he goes to a football match at Ghazi Stadium. At half-time red pickup trucks drive onto the pitch, and a man and a woman accused of adultery are stoned to death before the crowd; then the game goes on. The stadium was built in 1923 under King Amanullah Khan, and the Taliban really did use it for public executions. The official turns out to be Assef.

Beaten nearly to death by Assef and saved by Sohrab's slingshot, Amir escapes with the boy to Islamabad. Sohrab is fascinated by the enormous Shah Faisal Mosque near their hotel, and one day when he disappears, Amir finds him there. The adoption runs into American red tape, and when Amir has to tell Sohrab he may go back into an orphanage for a while, the boy tries to take his own life in the hotel bathtub. The mosque, finished in 1986, is one of the largest in the world.

Visitor guidance: Visitors are welcome outside prayer times; dress modestly and remove shoes before entering.

In March 2002 Sohrab lives with Amir and Soraya in California but has stopped speaking. On Afghan New Year they join an Afghan gathering at Lake Elizabeth in Fremont. When the rain stops the sky fills with kites, and Amir buys one and fights another boy's kite using Hassan's favourite trick. Sohrab almost smiles. Amir offers to run the cut kite for him and, thinking he sees a nod, sprints off across the grass with Hassan's old promise: "For you, a thousand times over."

Visitor guidance: Lake Elizabeth is in Fremont's Central Park, with a paved path around the water.