RAJ Ghatak is leading the cast for the 2018 tour of the West End hit adaptation of The Kite Runner, visiting the Grand Opera House in his York debut from Tuesday to Saturday.

Sticking closely to Khaled Hosseini's 20 million-selling novel, American playwright Matthew Spangler's stage adaptation features well-to-do Amir as the regretful narrator of a tale in which, as a child in 1970s' Kabul, he abandoned his friend, servant and the kite runner of the title, Hassan, during a savage attack by a neighbourhood bully.

Three decades later, Amir is living in the United States, working as a successful novelist, when he has the chance to atone: making a dangerous return to his now Taliban-controlled homeland on the eve of the America's invasion.

Raj recalls reading the book when it was first published in 2002. "And I thought it was beautiful,” he says of a tale which he believes speaks to all cultures. “As much as it's a story that travels between Afghanistan and America, everybody can identify with it on some level."

Amir is misunderstood, suggests Raj. "A lot of people say he's not a very nice guy, but but he's gone through quite a lot. As with most people, he's striving for his parents' approval, in this case his father's approval. They are very different, which causes clashes at times," he says.

"There's also the complexity of the socio-economic set-up where Amir and Hassan are best friends, but there's no getting away from the elephant in the room that Hassan is a mere servant. They're friends when it suits them but Amir is very aware he can pull that card when he needs to."

Raj takes this point further. "While Amir isn't a very nice person, if you look at what he does, he does have one redeeming quality. He stands in front of the audience and says I did it, so his honesty is established," he says. "But in playing Amir, I have to tread carefully in balancing telling the story and saying that at times you will not like me.

"At various points, you can even hear a tutting reaction, and because I never leave the stage – it's such a marathon role, it's a juggernaut – the audience are the people I speak to the most, so there's a very real and palpable relationship that I have with them. But I can't make Amir so horrible that you don't want to watch him."

Raj is at pains to point out he is part of an ensemble cast, although his role calls for plenty of direct address to the audience, and not for the first time in his career. "I did a new piece called Golgotha, a two-hander at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London by Nirjay Mohindru, where in the first half, I had to interact with an actress doing a monologue, playing seven or eight characters, and then in the second half, I had to do the monologue with her playing various characters," he says.

"It's something you need to get used to as a form of performance, and I then had to do it again when I did an 80-minute monologue show by Bernard Marie Koltes, playing to an English-speaking audience on an international tour in Jerusalem: the first and only time I've been to Israel."

Now, Amir presents him with fresh challenges. "I've spent much of my career originating and creating roles, so when there's already a well-oiled machine in place, like there is for The Kite Runner, it's a different experience, but a good one too. I was invited to see the show in the very last week of the previous tour, in Exeter, to get a feel of the role because it's a very stylised production." he says.

"I was struck by how well the company worked together; the storytelling is done so well, and while there's so much information, it moves at such a pace. Matthew Spangler has done a wonderful job, staying true to the novel, but with some licence too because some things wouldn't work on stage."

The Kite Runner is on tour at Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york