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
You have think tanks like the widely respected Atlantic Council that have published reports in the past year that have called Afghanistan a failing state.
I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.
I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.
Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies.
Educate yourself, learn about what refugees face when they don't have homes, after they have lost everything.
My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than them, who want love and affection in their life, who want a good future for the children.
Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.
Now, especially in public places, you always have that unease. When the children were cast, if I thought that they might be victims of violence because of participating in this movie, we would have chosen children from outside this country.
The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.
In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.
I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.
The country [Afghanistan] faces enormous problems. There is a violent insurgency hampering the rule of law and developmental efforts.
Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.
If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.