His three novels have all reached various levels of critical and commercial success. The success of The Kite Runner meant he was able to retire from medicine in order to write full-time. In later interviews, Hosseini admitted to feeling survivor's guilt for having been able to leave the country prior to the Soviet invasion and subsequent wars.Īfter graduating from college, Hosseini worked as a physician in California, a situation he likened to "an arranged marriage". Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2003 when he was 38, an experience similar to that of the protagonist in The Kite Runner. When Hosseini was 15, his family applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a naturalized citizen. His debut novel The Kite Runner (2003) was a critical and commercial success the book and his subsequent novels have all been at least partially set in Afghanistan and have featured an Afghan as the protagonist.īorn in Kabul, Afghanistan, to a diplomat father, Hosseini spent some time living in Iran and France. Khaled Hosseini ( / ˈ h ɑː l ɛ d h oʊ ˈ s eɪ n i/ Persian/Pashto خالد حسینی born March 4, 1965) is an Afghan-American novelist, UNHCR goodwill ambassador, and former physician. 10-city author tour foreign rights sold in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Israel, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.Recorded February 2014 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Bookclub
Though Afghanistan is now on the media back burner, its fate is still of major interest and may become even more so as the U.S.'s nation-building efforts are scrutinized. (June 2)įorecast: It is rare that a book is at once so timely and of such high literary quality. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s.
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