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
Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up.
I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.
I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.
Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.
You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen - it becomes distorted, and it's been diminished.
Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters.
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.
There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle.
The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime.
To me, families are puzzles that take a lifetime to work out - or not, as often is the case - and I like to explore how people within them try to connect, be it through love, duty, or circumstance.
I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.
I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It's what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do.
I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law.
My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.