About the Author

So you want to know more?

If you have read The Kite Runner, hopefully you are blown away by how well the story is written. Personally, I thought the book was brilliantly written and well thought-out. Can you believe that was Khaled Hosseini's FIRST novel? It takes real talent for an author's very first book to have such great success. Let's jump into Hosseini's biography and maybe we can come to terms with why he was so successful.

Khaled Hosseini was born on March 4, 1965, in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father worked for the foreign ministry, and in 1976, he was assigned to the embassy in Paris, France. This was three years after Daoud Khan proclaimed himself as president of the newly formed republic. In 1980, when it became apparent that the Hosseini family would not be able to return to Afghanistan, the family applied for political asylum in the United States. Once they were granted this, the family moved to San Jose, California, where they lived for a little while on welfare and worked at the flea market among fellow Afghans. Khaled was fifteen.

Khaled became a biology major at Santa Clara University and studied medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He began his medical practice in Pasadena, California. Not long afterward, Khaled and his wife, Roya, settled in Mountain View, California.

In 2003, Hosseini published his first novel, The Kite Runner, which made the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years. The book received a number of accolades including the Boeke Prize, the Alex Award, Literature to Life Award, and ALA Notable Book. Sadly, many Afghans rejected The Kite Runner, angered by its portrayal of ethnic prejudice. The book, however, became a movie in 2007. About a year and a half after The Kite Runner was published, Hosseini quit his medical career to become a full-time writer, and he was able to contribute all of his time to his next two novels.

Earlier in 2007, Hosseini published A Thousand Splendid Suns, a book also centered on the culture of Afghanistan. Much like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns accumulated great success, and it also spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list.

In 2013, Hosseini's third novel, And The Mountains Echoed, has already topped the charts on the New York Times bestseller list. If this book is anything like his last two, it is likely to stay on the bestseller list for a while.

Khaled Hosseini's website is: www.khaledhosseini.com.