Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan American physician and renowned author, best known for his critically acclaimed novels that explore themes of friendship, social class, and the impact of war on Afghan society. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 4, 1965, to a prominent family, Hosseini's life took a significant turn when his family sought political asylum in the United States due to the turmoil in Afghanistan. His debut novel, *The Kite Runner* (2003), is notable for being the first English-language novel about Afghanistan, capturing the complexities of Afghan culture and history against the backdrop of the Taliban's rise to power. This work, along with his second novel, *A Thousand Splendid Suns* (2007), has played a pivotal role in increasing global awareness of the struggles faced by Afghan people, particularly women under Taliban rule.
Hosseini's writing is characterized by its emotional depth and cultural sensitivity, inviting readers from diverse backgrounds to engage with the human experiences of his characters. Beyond his literary achievements, he is also an active humanitarian, founding the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to support refugees and those affected by conflict. His later works, including *And the Mountains Echoed* (2013) and *Sea Prayer* (2018), continue to reflect his commitment to social issues and the plight of displaced individuals. Hosseini's contributions as both a storyteller and a humanitarian advocate have made a significant impact on how Afghan stories are perceived and understood worldwide.
Khaled Hosseini
- Born: March 4, 1965
- Place of Birth: Kabul, Afghanistan
AFGHAN-BORN ACTIVIST, PHYSICIAN, AND WRITER
Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan American physician and author of two international best-selling novels set in Afghanistan, the country of his birth. His lively and deeply felt novels address cultural and political topics, especially with regard to issues that arose in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Full name: Khaled Hosseini
Areas of achievement: Activism, literature, medicine
Early Life
Khaled Hosseini was born to a prominent Pashtun family in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 4, 1965. His father was a diplomat serving the government of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, and his mother was a high school teacher in Kabul. As a child, Hosseini read Persian poetry as well as translations of English and American literature, enjoying a happy boyhood in a country at peace. The family moved to Tehran, Iran, when Hosseini was five years old. There, his father worked for the Afghan embassy. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry—now under the control of Mohammed Daoud Khan’s new republican government—relocated Hosseini’s father to a diplomatic post in Paris, France, where the family lived until 1980.
When a violent revolution placed the Russian-backed Communist Party of Afghanistan in power in 1980, the Hosseini family was given political asylum in the United States when unable to return to Kabul. The family moved to San Jose, California, when Hosseini was fifteen, at first living off welfare and food stamps until his father managed to obtain a position as a driving instructor.
Hosseini completed his high school education in San Jose and earned a BA from Santa Clara University in 1988. In 1993, he received an MD from the University of California at San Diego’s School of Medicine. Completing his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, Hosseini practiced as an internist from 1996 to 2004.
Life’s Work
The same year Hosseini began to practice medicine, a repressive Islamist military group known as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Hosseini was deeply affected by the news that the Taliban had banned the traditional kite-flying competitions so popular in his home country, decrying them as un-Islamic. The destruction of that Afghan tradition inspired him to begin his first novel, The Kite Runner, published in 2003.
Additionally, Hosseini’s boyhood friendship with a servant from the Hazara minority inspired the novel’s central story: the deep but troubled friendship between a socially powerful Pashtun Afghan boy from the Sunni branch of Islam and a downtrodden Hazara boy raised in the Shiite sect. The intense and intimate story, which explores friendship and social class as well as the complicated dynamics between fathers and sons, is set within a larger, comprehensive depiction of the drastic changes in Afghan society between the 1970s and late 1990s, concentrating especially on the way the brutality and inhumanity of the Taliban regime devastated Afghan society. Hosseini’s novel also examines such social issues as the thorny relationship between the competing Shia and Sunni branches of Islam and the plight of Afghan immigrants seeking sanctuary in the United States, while at the same time making the construction of successful manhood the psychological center of his narrative.
In addition to his inclusion of Afghan history and traditions, Hosseini threaded Farsi, Dari, and Pashtu phrases throughout the novel to further emphasize the reality of the multicultural nature of Afghanistan for American readers. Epic in scope and a triumph of psychological realism, this novel became an international best seller and was also adapted into a successful American film in 2007 and an acclaimed graphic novel in 2012. The Kite Runner received the South African Boeke Prize in 2004 and was voted the Reading Group Book of the Year for 2006 and 2007.
Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was published in 2007. It depicts the developing bond between two Afghan women from two very dissimilar strata of Afghan society as they each endure shocking mistreatment under the Islamic fundamentalism represented by the Taliban regime. Like Hosseini’s first book, this novel tells an intimate story embedded within a broader narrative about the history of Afghanistan from the end of the monarchy to the fall of the Taliban after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also drew on Hosseini’s empathic observations of the dire situation of women in Afghanistan when he returned there in 2006 as a Goodwill Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This sensitive and insightful depiction of the poverty and persecution of women from all walks of life under the Taliban regime also earned a devoted readership and positive critical reception. Like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns was an international best seller; it was awarded the Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year 2008 and the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year award for fiction. A stage adaptation of A Thousand Splendid Suns premiered in 2017, and rights to adapt the book into a television miniseries were optioned by One Community in 2021.
While both novels are indispensable resources for individuals seeking historical and cultural information about modern Afghanistan, both have also created a community of readers from many different cultures and countries, all of whom can identify with the basic humanity of Hosseini’s characters as they struggle to fulfill their dreams, find love and friendship, and build and protect their families. Additionally, these two novels are distinguished by their retrieval of a humanistic and peace-loving Islam that contrasts with the militaristic and punitive religion promulgated by the Taliban.
Hosseini's 2013 novel And the Mountains Echoed is a multigenerational family saga that spans continents and, much like his first work, focuses on betrayal, loss, and redemption, as well as Afghan identity in diaspora. It was widely praised for its characterizations and descriptions, Hosseini's signature narrative strengths. Some critics found its intricate plotting lacking in cohesion, however. It, along with his earlier works, earned Hosseini the John Steinbeck Award from San Jose State University in 2014.
Hosseini received a Humanitarian Award from the United Nations Refugee Agency in June 2006 and was named a goodwill ambassador in 2013. The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a humanitarian organization Hosseini established, works to provide shelter to refugee families from Afghanistan, economic and educational opportunities for Afghans, and health care for Afghan women and children. Through his involvement with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Hosseini has spoken out on behalf of refugees and displaced people not only in Afghanistan, but in Chad and Syria as well.
Those experiences inspired and informed a short, illustrated work of fiction titled Sea Prayer (2018), about a Syrian father who puts his son into a boat to flee violence in their country. The work was also adapted into a collaborative virtual-reality project with artist Liz Edwards, voice actor Adeel Akhtar, and the Kronos Quartet.
In 2021, after two decades in Afghanistan, the United States military withdrew in keeping with an agreement forged by the administration of President Donald Trump the previous year. Hosseini was deeply upset by the turmoil and the return of the Taliban. He encouraged Americans to press lawmakers to help Afghans who had assisted Americans and were trapped in Afghanistan, where they were in danger of being killed.
Significance
The Kite Runner is the first English-language novel written about Afghanistan, and it immediately spoke to the concerns of Americans in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan. That novel, along with A Thousand Splendid Suns, significantly advanced American knowledge of Afghanistan’s cultural, religious, political, and historical situation, as well as the daily lives of its people. Additionally, the novels were exceptional in their creation of entertaining and compelling stories with vivid characters who spoke not only to specific Afghan issues but also to universal themes involving family, love, friendship, guilt, and redemption. The stories and characters reached across cultural and religious divides and created occasions for empathic identification and understanding.
The enthusiastic critical and popular reception of his work made Hosseini a literary sensation. The success of these two novels also established Hosseini as a distinguished humanitarian and human rights advocate and as a spokesperson who has brought issues concerning the Afghan people to the attention of the outside world.
Bibliography
Harris, Elizabeth A. "'There's So Much More to Afghanistan': Khaled Hosseini Reflects on His Birthplace." The New York Times, 18 Aug. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/books/khaled-hosseini-afghanistan.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
Hayes, Judi Slayden. In Search of “The Kite Runner.” Chalice, 2007.
Hosseini, Khaled. "Khaled Hosseini: 'I Have Reconnected with Afghanistan in an Intimate Way.'" Interview by Kate Kellaway. The Observer, 3 May 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/04/khaled-hosseini-reconnected-with-afghanistan-kite-runner. Accessed 20 July 2021.
"Khaled Hosseini." UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. UNHCR, 2001–21, www.unhcr.org/en-us/khaled-hosseini.html. Accessed 20 July 2021.
Sherman, Sue. Cambridge Wizard Student Guide: “The Kite Runner.” Cambridge UP, 2006.
Stuhr, Rebecca. Reading Khaled Hosseini. Libraries Unlimited, 2009.
Wallace, Carvell. “How Khaled Hosseini Finds Hope in Telling Refugees’ Stories.” The Guardian, 2 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/02/how-khaled-hosseini-finds-hope-in-telling-refugees-stories. Accessed 20 July 2021.