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
Khaled Hosseini quotes about
Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult.
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.
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.
Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.
American high school culture was impenetrable to me, and very cliquey: you had the Hispanics, the African Americans, the surfer guys and the goths and the immigrants. The jocks and the surfers got the girls. By the time I'd got to grips with it, I'd graduated.
I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal have been intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical.
It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don't see that as a reality anytime soon. But I think some form of representative political process is not that far-fetched.
Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.
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.
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'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.
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.