Khaled Hosseini

Who is Khaled Hosseini?

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. After graduating from college, he worked as a doctor in California, an occupation that he likens to "an arranged marriage" for him. 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 Afghans as the protagonist. Following the success of The Kite Runner, he decided to stop practicing medicine and became a full-time writer.

Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father worked as a diplomat, and when Hosseini was 11 years old, the family moved to France; four years later, they applied for asylum in the United States. He attended school in America with little knowledge of the English language at the time and later became a citizen. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2003 at the age of 38, where he "felt like a tourist in [his] own country". In interviews about the experience, he admitted to sometimes feeling survivor's guilt for having been able to leave the country before the Soviet invasion and subsequent wars.

All three of his novels became bestsellers, with The Kite Runner spending 101 weeks on the bestseller list as a paperback. In 2007, The Kite Runner was followed by A Thousand Splendid Suns, which has spent 21 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback fiction and 49 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction. The two novels have sold more than 38 million copies internationally.