Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseiniis an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. After graduating from college, he worked as a doctor in California, an occupation that he likened to "an arranged marriage". He has published three novels, most notably his 2003 debut The Kite Runner, all of which are at least partially set in Afghanistan and feature an Afghan as the protagonist. Following the success of The Kite Runner he retired from medicine to write full-time...
NationalityAfghani
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 March 1965
CityKabul, Afghanistan
But then it passed, as all things do.
If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside.
Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well, God put a lot of thought into making you.
Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her.
If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting.
If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.
I have been a fan of comic books since childhood.
If the story had been about anyone else, it would been dismissed as laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate ---sadly, almost a national affliction; if someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once passed a biology test in high school.
It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.
He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.
Hassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.
My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.
In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.
Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.