Biography
Author of the internationally bestselling The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American author who sought political asylum in the US when he was a teenager. Born in 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan to a diplomat father and schoolteacher mother, Hosseini lived in an upper-class neighbourhood. When he was 11 years old, the family moved to Paris, France, where his father was posted. In 1980, when they tried to return to Afghanistan, they found the political situation had changed, and they were forced to claim political asylum in America. Hosseini moved to California when he was 15 years old, unable to speak any English, and initially found the experience very alienating.
After graduating from Santa Clara University with a degree in biology in 1984, he enrolled in medical school, graduated in 1993, and started a successful career at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. In 2001, driven by a desire to share the culture of his homeland amid reports that the Taliban had banned kite flying, he started to write his first novel. In 2003, The Kite Runner was published.
Set in Afghanistan during the tumultuous events of the 1970s and present day San Francisco, The Kite Runner was a New York Times bestseller, spent 101 weeks on the bestsellers list, has been translated in 42 languages, and was adapted into a film in 2007. A commercial success, Hosseini was able to give up his job in medicine to write full time. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns was published in 2007 and won the British Book Award Best Richard & Judy Best Book Of The Year; his third, And The Mountains Echoed, was published in 2013 and was a Goodreads Choice Award winner.
Using his personal connection to Afghanistan to raise awareness of the struggles of everyday Afghans, Khaled Hosseini is a powerful storyteller who brings an insightful, human touch to complex, worldwide events.
