Khaled Hosseini Touches Lives Worldwide
By Tapping Universal Hopes and Dreams

The Kite Runner
(Riverhead Books)
ISBN (trade paperback):
9781594480-00-3

Khaled Hosseini
Best selling author
Photo by John Dolan

Find out how you can help Hosseini's Foundation by sending a picture of yourself to:

AUTHORLINK: You are the author of the #1 best selling debut novel, The Kite Runner, one of the most unforgettable stories of our time--about the tragic lives of two families in Afghanistan. Later you wrote the second powerful bestseller, A Thousand Splendid Suns, the heartbreaking story of two Afghan women sentences to the horrors of arranged marriages. What motivated you to reveal the terrors of Afghan life, after moving from your native Kabul to the safety of America in the 1980s? Had you always wanted to be an author, or was it the Afghan people’s plight in a war torn country that compelled you to write?

HOSSEINI: I had been entertaining the idea of writing a story of Afghan women for some time after I’d finished writing The Kite Runner. That first novel was a male-dominated story. There was a whole facet of Afghan society which I hadn’t touched on in The Kite Runner, an entire landscape that I felt was fertile with story ideas. After all, so much had happened to Afghan women in the last thirty years, particularly after the Soviets withdrew and factional fighting broke out. With the outbreak of civil war, women in Afghanistan were subjected to gender based human rights abuses, such as rape and forced marriage. They were used as spoils of war. They were abducted and sold into prostitution.

In the spring of 2003, I went to Kabul, and I recall seeing these burqa-clad women sitting at street corners, with four, five, six children, begging for change. I remember watching them walking in pairs up the street, trailed by their children in ragged clothes, and wondering how life had brought them to that point. What were their dreams, hopes, longings? Who were their husbands? What had they lost, whom had they lost, in the wars that plagued Afghanistan for two decades?

I spoke to many people in Kabul. Their life stories were truly heartbreaking. For instance, one woman, a mother of six, told me that her husband, a traffic policeman, made $40 a month and hadn’t been paid in six months. She had borrowed from friends and relatives to survive, but since she could not pay them back, they had stopped lending her money. And so, every day she dispatched her children to different parts of Kabul to beg at street corners. I spoke to another woman who told me that a widowed neighbor of hers, faced with the prospect of starvation, had laced bread crumbs with rat poison and fed it to her kids, then had eaten it herself. I met a little girl whose father had been paralyzed from the waist down by shrapnel. She and her mother begged on the streets of Kabul from sunrise to sundown.

AUTHORLINK: You now have 5 million copies of The Kite Runner and another 1.7 million of your second book in print. When you began writing The Kite Runner, did you ever imagine the book would touch as many lives across the globe?

HOSSEINI: I never for a moment imagined that my books would turn out as successful as they have proved to be. I think part of the reason The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns have been so popular with book readers is that they are very much human stories. Because the themes of friendship, betrayal, guilt, redemption, the uneasy love between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, are universal themes and not specifically Afghan, the books have been able to reach across cultural, racial, religious, and gender gaps to resonate with readers of varying backgrounds. I think people respond to the emotions in these books.

AUTHORLINK: What was your original hope or goal for The Kite Runner?

HOSSEINI: For me as a writer, story has always taken precedence over everything else. The original hope for anything I have ever written has always been character and a gripping story. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping socio-political ideas in mind. It always starts for me from a very personal, intimate place, about human connections, and then expands from there. What intrigued me, for instance, about A thousand splendid Suns, were the hopes and dreams and disillusions of these two women, their inner lives, the specific circumstances that bring them together, their resolve to survive, and their evolving relationship into something meaningful and powerful, even as the world around them unravels and slips into chaos. But as I wrote that book, I witnessed the story expanding, becoming more ambitious page after page. I realized that telling the story of these two women without telling, in part, the story of what happened in Afghanistan from the 1970’s to the post-9/11 era simply was not feasible. The intimate and personal was intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical. And so, the turmoil in Afghanistan and the country’s tortured recent past slowly became more than merely the backdrop. Of course, I will be gratified if readers step away from A Thousand Splendid Suns not only with a satisfying story, but also with a little more insight and a more personal sense of what has happened in Afghanistan in the last thirty years.

AUTHORLINK: Briefly describe your journey to becoming a successful author. Was it a difficult journey? What self doubts did you have to overcome to finish the work and find a publisher?

HOSSEINI: I enjoyed practicing medicine and was always honored that patients put their trust in me to take care of them and their loved ones. But writing had always been my passion, since childhood, much as with Amir in The Kite Runner. I feel fortunate and privileged that writing has become my livelihood. It is a dream realized.

In the grand scheme of things, considering what many struggling writers go through to get published, I had a fairly smooth path to publication. I submitted the manuscript to and received rejections from about thirty or so literary agencies before I found Elaine Koster, my agent since 2002. Although that may seem like a lot, it is actually quite normal for an unknown writer to have to knock on many doors. Once I had found Elaine, she immediately found a good home for The Kite Runner at Riverhead, my publisher for both books. I feel very lucky. Of course, there were many periods of self-doubt and several crisis of confidence, both during the writing and after, but that is also par for the course and an intrinsic part of the writing life. The key is to expect it to happen, persevere, and move on. This has been an invaluable lesson for me.

AUTHORLINK: What was the greatest challenge in writing and publishing your books. Was it in the writing of the stories themselves? Or in finding a publisher or an agent who believed in the project? If in the writing, what was the most difficult thing for you to do—perhaps revisit the terrors you had left behind?

HOSSEINI: I will answer this question as it pertains to my second book, since there was a lot more at stake then, given the success of The Kite Runner. The most difficult part of writing that book was trying to capture an authentic “female voice”, if I can call it that. It was rather daunting at first. I worried too much about getting the voice “right.” I continuously grappled with the notion that a woman inhabits a different social and emotional arena, that a woman’s experience of the world is comprised of unique perceptions and emotions, different from those of a man. I wanted to handle this deftly, and the harder I tried the more self-conscious I became about it, and the less convincing Mariam and Laila’s voices sounded to me. The waiting public and the pressure I put on myself to write a good story compounded the challenge.

In the end, The critical insight for me was to stop thinking of these characters as women per se, but to understand them as human being, people with fears, hopes, disappointments, etc. The more I understood them as people, the less self-conscious I became, the more able I was to get drawn out of my own skin and into that of these two women. I would liken it to an act of reverse ventriloquism. When I started, I was the ventriloquist, speaking with my voice through Mariam and Laila. But as I kept writing and understanding the core and essence of these female characters, they became the ventriloquist, speaking through me, as it were. It was a real watershed development for me, and an immensely gratifying one. In the end, I tried to write these women as truthfully and authentically as I could.

AUTHORLINK: Are the characters in your novels real, imagined, or a combination of both?

I often get asked if The Kite Runner, especially, is a disguised autobiography. It is not. The story line of The Kite Runner is largely fictional. However, there certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative. The descriptions of Kabul circa 1970’s, the social set up, the political milieu, are based on my own recollection and observations. The kite fighting and the games Amir and Hassan play mirror the way my brother and I passed our time, as does Amir and Hassan’s love for films, in particular westerns. Probably the passages most resembling my own life are the ones in the US, with Amir and Baba trying to build a new life for themselves. I too came to the U.S. as an immigrant and I recall vividly those first few years in California, the brief time we spent on welfare, and the difficult task of assimilating into a new culture.

The latter part of the book is entirely fictional. For those Taliban passages, I primarily relied on the accounts of Afghans who had lived in Afghanistan in that era. Over the years, at Afghan gatherings, parties, weddings, I had spoken to various Afghans who had lived in Taliban-ruled Kabul. When I sat down to write the final third of The Kite Runner, I found I had unintentionally accumulated over the years a wealth of anecdotes, telling details, stories, and accounts about Kabul in those days. So I did no have to do too much research. Of course, I also relied on media reports through Afghan online magazines, TV, radio, etc. But most of it was from Afghan eyewitness accounts.

The simple answer is that in the end, novels are hybrids, part autobiography, part imagination, with the line often blurring between the two.

AUTHORLINK: Your stories have changed the way many around the world look at Afghanistan. What training had you had to become an author? Who taught or influenced you to write? What is your writing process? Do you outline or not? How long does it take for you to write a novel?

HOSSEINI: I have no training at all in the craft of writing. What I know about writing I know from actually writing, and of course reading other authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, TC Boyle, Alice Munro, J.M Coetzee, Ian McEwen, Carol Shields, and others. Though no single writer has inspired me, they all collectively have, since I always take something of value from every author I read.

I write at home, on a computer, in my small office. I write from morning, from about nine AM, to about 3PM. My goal is to get about 3 pages a day. Some days I exceed that and other days that goal seems far too ambitious. I don’t like to make outlines --they work for some writers, but not for me. Outlines have always felt too constrictive to me. They commit me to a certain path, if you will, and suppress the spontaneity and the freedom to go with a wild idea if one pops up. I write from beginning to end without outlining or thinking too far ahead. Every book is different, and therefore takes a different amount of time to get done. A Thousand Splendid Suns, for instance, took more than twice as long to finish than The Kite Runner, even though I had quit medicine already. It was a more complex and ambitious book, I think, and needed that extra time to get done.

AUTHORLINK: Your phenomenal success as an author has enabled you to extend your reach beyond your readership into the lives of troubled people. In 2008 you founded The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, an organization that, through the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has funded more than 100 shelters, helped build schools and support teachers in Afghanistan, and awarded a scholarship to a student at the University of California-Berkeley who entered the U.S. under adverse circumstances. Could you have achieved all of this without having been a storyteller?

HOSSEINI: I don’t think so. The success of my books has opened doors for me and put me in a position to advocate for causes I believe in and support vulnerable people back in Afghanistan. It is a fantastic privilege to have some access to media and a public forum to share your beliefs and put forth ideas that can make enduring differences in people’s lives. In many ways, the formation of the foundation and the work that we have accomplished and the work that we are eager to accomplish, has been as rewarding as the writing and the getting published. I feel fortunate to be in this position.

AUTHORLINK: For you, how important is storytelling to human understanding? Could you just as easily have chosen to write non-fiction? Why novels?

The novel has a unique ability. It is a tool to help us connect to others. Perhaps more than any other art form, story gives us a window into the mind of those who may be very different from us. I recall reading a novel called What is the What, by Dave Eggers, a book about the plight of a South Sudanese refugee during that country’s devastating civil war. What I knew about that war and its toll on the people of South Sudan was from random newspaper articles. But Egger’s book, with its humanity, its humor and its vast compassion for its subject, brought the war to me in a real and personal way every night when I sat down to read it. It made it impossible for me to gloss over the suffering of the Dinka people. Because, thanks to the book, I suddenly knew who they were.

AUTHORLINK: What advice do you have for authors who are trying to break into the publishing world—to tell their stories? What qualities or skills must they possess?

HOSSEINI: On the artistic side of it, I wish I had some illuminating, earth shattering advice to give to new writers, but the truth is that there are two things that are indispensable if one wants to be a writer: First, you have to actually write (I cannot tell you the number of times people walk up to me and tell me they are sure they have a novel in them if they could get around to it.). Second, you have to read. You have to read a lot, and all the time. I think writers learn from each other, especially young writers.

The business side of it is a combination of luck and perseverance, assuming the manuscript is of quality. There are entire books written on ways to get published. But the first thing is to write a compelling story. If you have written one, then you have to believe in it and persevere and hopefully you will catch a break and get the manuscript into the right hands.

AUTHORLINK: What is the most personally gratifying thing about the success you have achieved?

HOSSEINI: I get letters from India, South Africa, Tel Aviv, Sidney, London, Arkansas. People tell me they want to send money to Afghanistan. One reader told me he wanted to adopt an Afghan orphan. It’s a great honor for me when readers write me that Afghanistan for them is no longer just the caves of Tora Bora and Poppy Fields and Bin Laden, but that think of my homeland as more than just another unhappy, chronically troubled, afflicted land. In these letters, I see the unique ability fiction has to connect people through universal human experiences. It’s a great honor for me and a very gratifying reward to see that my books have helped paint a more human, sympathetic picture of Afghanistan for readers.

Editor’s Note: Hosseini’s publisher, Riverhead Trade Paperbacks, a division of Penguin Group (USA), is sponsoring a campaign to raise money for The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. Called the Picture a Book Changing Lives campaign, the effort invites people to submit up to two still photos of themselves reading or holding a copy of either The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns. For each eligible photo uploaded to the Hosseini group page of the Penguin Group (USA) web site, Riverhead will donate $2.00 (up to a maximum $25,000 donation) to The Foundation. Now through August 31st, ,(11:59:59pm ET) 2010, people can visit www.penguin.com/community/hosseini, join the “Hosseini” group, and upload their pictures.

About the author

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1970, the Foreign Ministry sent his family to Tehran, where his father worked for the Afghan embassy. They lived in Tehran until 1973, when they returned to Kabul. In July of 1973, on the night Hosseini’s youngest brother was born, the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, was overthrown in a bloodless coup by the king’s cousin, Daoud Khan. At the time, Hosseini was in fourth grade and was already drawn to poetry and prose; he read a great deal of Persian poetry as well as Farsi translations of novels ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series.

In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry once again relocated the Hosseini family, this time to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States and moved to San Jose, California in September of 1980. In America, they lived for a short while on food stamps, having lost all their property in Afghanistan. Hosseini earned a bachelor's degree in Biology in 1988 from Santa Clara University and earned his Medical degree in 1993 from the University of California-San Diego's School of Medicine. After his residency, Hosseini began practicing internal medicine in 1996, but his first love has always been writing.

The Kite Runner, an international bestseller, has been published in 34 countries. Published in hardcover by Riverhead Books in June 2003, The Kite Runner won the Borders Original Voices Award in the fiction category. In addition, the book was named a Top Ten Fiction Pick of 2003 by Entertainment Weekly, was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year in 2003, an ALA Notable book, and received the American Place Theatre’s Literature to Life Award. His publisher has shipped more than 5 million cOpies of all editions of The Kite Runner, and 1.75 million copies of his second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, also a New York Times bestseller, published by Riverhead Books in 2007.

--Doris Booth
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