The Kites

Reviews / Votes

The Kites is indeed a treasure, capable of accessing an enormous node of insight and almost-overwhelming beauty spliced with bittersweet candor... we are lucky to have it at last. We're going to need it. * BOMB Magazine * This final work by a maverick genius of modern French fiction tells a story of love and war that's both charming and moving. It's a perfect introduction to the unique imagination of Romain Gary -- Boyd Tonkin Romain Gary has created a gallery of heroes who are willing to die for liberty but have to settle for the lesser victory of self-knowledge * Time * A major literary star ... whose life was stranger than fiction * Guardian * A rebel French writer ... a brilliant storyteller, a master craftsman and one of France's most original writers * Independent * What talent, most certainly, how many ideas and passions too. You seize us and shake us. Ah! -- Charles de Gaulle What a gold mine! -- Jean Paul Sartre A truly beautiful novel -- David Bellos Gary is brilliant at capturing the existential emotion for which the title of "The Kites" is an obvious metaphor -- sky-bound yet tethered by that string. -- Gal Beckerman * New York Times Book Review * More than a humorist, more than a storyteller, he's a moralist, an independent and significant student of the struggle to tell right from wrong, good conduct from bad. This struggle took place within a life that was, as people like to say, itself as good a story as any novel that he wrote -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker *