Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman.-Nana
What good is it? All this, what good is it? -Mariam
I dream of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all the times we fished together. Do you remember all the times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. -Jalil's letter
Regret...when it comes to you, I have oceans of it. -Jalil's letter
Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they're probably more free now,f under the communists, and have more rights than they've ever had before. -Babi
Mariam is having a flashback
Jailil: Ah yes. Of course. Well then, without further ado...
Jalil: try it on, Mariam jo.
Mariam: What do you think?
Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist and
physicianA physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
of ethnic Tajik origin. He is a citizen of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where he has lived since he was fifteen years old. His
2003The year 2003 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Peter Ackroyd - The Clerkenwell Tales*Atsuko Asano - No...
debut novelA debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
,
The Kite RunnerThe Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini's first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007....
, was an international bestseller, selling more than 12 million copies worldwide. His second,
A Thousand Splendid SunsA Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. It is his second, following his bestselling 2003 debut, The Kite Runner. The book focuses on the tumultuous lives of two Afghan women and how their lives cross each other, spanning from the 1960s to 2003...
, was released on May 22, 2007. In 2008, the book was the bestselling novel in Britain (as of April 11, 2008), with more than 700,000 copies sold.
Biography
Hosseini was born in
KabulKabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
, Afghanistan, in 1965. In 1970 Hosseini and his family moved to
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
where his father worked for the
Embassy of Afghanistan in
TehranTehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. In 1973, Hosseini's family returned to Kabul, and Hosseini's youngest brother was born in July of that year.
In 1976, Hosseini's father obtained a job in
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and moved the family there. They were unable to return to Afghanistan because of the
Saur RevolutionThe Saur Revolution is the name given to the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan takeover of political power from the government of Afghanistan on 28 April 1978. The word 'Saur', i.e...
in which the
PDPAThe People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
communist partyA political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
seized power through a bloody coup in April 1978. Instead, in 1980 they sought political asylum in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and made their residence in
San Jose, CaliforniaSan Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
.
Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose in 1984 and enrolled at
Santa Clara UniversitySanta Clara University is a private, not-for-profit, Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California, United States. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose...
, where he earned a bachelor's degree in
biologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
in 1988. The following year, he entered the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
, School of Medicine, where he earned his
M.D.Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
in 1993. He completed his
residencyResidency is a stage of graduate medical training. A resident physician or resident is a person who has received a medical degree , Podiatric degree , Dental Degree and who practices...
in
internal medicineInternal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
at
Cedars-Sinai Medical CenterOriginally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...
in
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in 1996. He practiced medicine for over ten years, until a year and a half after the release of
The Kite Runner.
Hosseini is currently a Goodwill Envoy for the
United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesThe Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , also known as The UN Refugee Agency is a United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to...
(UNHCR). He lives in Northern California with his wife, Roya, and their two children.
Influences
When Khaled Hosseini was a child, he read a great deal of
Persian poetryPersian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
as well as
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
translations of novels ranging from
Alice in Wonderland to
Mickey SpillaneFrank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...
's
Mike HammerMichael "Mike" Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury .-Description:...
series. Hosseini's "very fond memories of [his] childhood" in peaceful pre-Soviet era Afghanistan, as well as his personal experiences with Afghanistan's Hazara people led to the writing of his first novel,
The Kite Runner. One Hazara man, named Hossein Khan, worked for the Hosseinis when they were living in
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. When Khaled Hosseini was in third grade, he taught Khan to read and write. Although his relationship with Hossein Khan was brief and rather formal, Hosseini's fond memories of this relationship served as an inspiration for the relationship between Hassan and Amir in
The Kite Runner.
Novels
- The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini's first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007....
is the story of a young boy, Amir, struggling to establish a closer rapport with his father and coping with memories of a haunting childhood event. The novel is set in Afghanistan, from the fall of the monarchy until the collapse of the Taliban regime, and in the San Francisco Bay AreaThe San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
, specifically in Fremont, California. Its many themes include ethnic tensions between the Hazara and the PashtunPashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
in Afghanistan, and the immigrantImmigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
experiences of Amir and his father in the United States. The novel was the number three best seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. The Kite Runner was also produced as an audiobook read by the author. The Kite RunnerThe Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini's first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007....
has been adapted into a film of the same nameThe Kite Runner is a 2007 drama film directed by Marc Forster based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is tormented by the guilt of abandoning his friend Hassan, the son of his father's...
released in December, 2007. Hosseini made a cameo appearance towards the end of the movie as a bystander when Amir buys a kite which he later flies with Sohrab.
- Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. It is his second, following his bestselling 2003 debut, The Kite Runner. The book focuses on the tumultuous lives of two Afghan women and how their lives cross each other, spanning from the 1960s to 2003...
, is also set in Afghanistan. The story addresses many of the same issues as Hosseini's first, but takes a more feminine perspective. It follows the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become entwined. The story is set during Afghanistan's tumultuous thirty-year transition from Soviet occupation to Taliban control and post-Taliban rebuilding. The novel was released by Riverhead BooksRiverhead Books is a division of Penguin Group .Notable books and major bestsellers published by Riverhead include Journals by Kurt Cobain; The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; The Color of Water by James McBride; Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft by Chang-rae Lee; Fever...
on May 22, 2007, at the same time as the Simon & Schuster audiobook. Movie rights have been acquired by producer Scott RudinScott Rudin is an American film producer and a theatrical producer.-Early life and work:Scott Rudin was born in New York City, NY, on July 14, 1958, and raised in the town of Baldwin on Long Island. At the age of sixteen, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden...
and Columbia PicturesColumbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
.
Biographical and critical sources
- Booklist, July, 2003, Kristine Huntley, review of The Kite Runner, p. 1864.
- Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003, review of The Kite Runner, p. 630.
- Library Journal, April 15, 2003, Rebecca Stuhr, review of The Kite Runner, p. 122; November 15, 2003, Michael Adams, review of The Kite Runner (audio version), p. 114.
- New York Times Book Review, August 3, 2003, Edward Hower, review of The Kite Runner, p. 4.
- Publishers Weekly, May 12, 2003, review of The Kite Runner, p. 43.
- School Library Journal, November, 2003, Penny Stevens, review of The Kite Runner, p. 171.
- Stuhr, Rebecca. Reading Khaled Hosseini. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Press, 2009.
- Times (London, England), August 30, 2003, review of The Kite Runner, p. 17
See also
- List of best-selling fiction authors
- Afghan American
An Afghan American refers to an American with heritage or origins in Afghanistan.-History and population:Afghan Americans have a long history of immigrating to the United States, as they may have arrived as early as the 1920s...
External links