Khaled Hosseini was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan where his father worked for the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry. In 1976, Hosseini's father moved their family to Paris, France and chose not to return to Afghanistan because the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan had seized power through a bloody coup. In 1980 they sought political asylum and moved to the United States to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose and enrolled in Santa Clara University and earned a bachelors degree in Biology. He then transferred to the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine where he earned his M.D. He practiced medicine in Los Angeles until a year and a half after releasing The Kite Runner. He began writing The Kite Runner in March 2001 and released the novel in 2003. It was published in 48 countries and has become an international best seller. He published his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2007 and was released to 40 countries. Hosseini has been working to provide humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. Currently Hosseini lives in Northern California with his wife Roya, and their two children.
When Hosseini was a child growing up in Kabul he read a great deal of Persian Poetry as well as the Persian translated Alice in Wonderland. Hosseini had many memories of pre-Soviet era Iran and remembers his personal experiences with the Hazara people which inspired him to write his first novel. Hosseini befriended the family's cook, a Hazara man, who along with many others was in a minority that had long suffered from discrimination in Iran. When he was only in 3rd grade he taught the man how to read and write and gained insight to the injustices of his own society. I believe that Hosseini felt compelled to tell people about his childhood and his experiences with living in Iran and having to leave because of the coup, because he wanted to tell people his stories without directly writing about his life.
In his two novels, Khaled Hosseini uses imagery as a key writing style in his book. In his first novel, The Kite Runner, he narrates a deeply reflective tale of a boy growing up in Afghanistan and having to move to America after Soviet powers took over Kabul. The plot of this book very directly relates to Hosseini's own history. He hoped to give western readers a different perspective of Afghanistan. Most stories often center around the opium trade, various wars and the war on terrorism, but this book comes at it from a different angle. Because the themes of the book such as friendship, betrayal, guilt, redemption and odd relationships between fathers and sons are universal themes, the book has reached across cultural, racial, religious and gender gaps. Hosseini loves to write stories and was inspired by Stephen King's saying: if you have a story to tell and the skill to tell it, and you don't, then you are a monkey. The mix of cultural and writing influences from both the U.S. and Afghanistan are what make Hosseini's novels especially excellent.
Well done Marielle!
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