WAR AS LIVED EXPERIENCE: TRAUMA, SURVIVAL, AND REFUGEE CONSCIOUSNESS IN KHALED HOSSEINI’S THE KITE RUNNER

The contemporary war fiction increasingly emphasizes the lived realities of individuals instead of focusing on strategic or political narratives of battle, and this change is best illustrated by Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel The Kite Runner, which portrays war as a deeply internalized phenomenon that affects memory, identity, and moral consciousness. The function of trauma, survival, and refugee awareness as interrelated aspects of war as lived experience in the novel is examined in this paper. Through trauma theory and exile studies, the paper argues that Hosseini depicts war as a chronic psychological state that permeates exile and diaspora rather than as a discrete historical event, drawing on trauma theory and exile studies. While survival emerges as an ethically compromised process rather than heroic endurance, Amir's narrative voice portrays the long-lasting impacts of guilt, silence, and moral harm. Additionally, the novel's portrayal of the refugee experience shows exile as a stage of emotional liminality where pain is reframed within diasporic identity rather than erased.