Abstract: Often castigated for their Eurocentric tendencies, trauma studies offer a rather universal paradigm that can be adapted to culture-specific contexts once their idiosyncratic characteristics are taken into consideration. With the most disturbing traumatic experiences relegated to the domain of the unsaid, traumatic events and their effects remain within the confining shackles of taboo and societal norms that inhibit victims from relating the incidents they have endured. Literature provides an alternative method to gain access to these testimonies. This paper aims at exploring the issue of child abuse and its traumatic effects upon the victims through a close reading of Khaled Hosseinis novel, The Kite Runner. Highly controversial and sensitive in nature, this phenomenon remains shrouded in silence. The fictional mode constitutes thus a substitute realm that allows the thorough examination of this question and paves the way towards the identification of the causes behind this deviant practice and the eradication thereof.