Info+about+the+author

Behind the pen


[|Khaled Hossein] was born In Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. He was the oldest of five children. His father worked for the Afghan Foreign Ministry as a diplomat, and his mother was a high school teacher of Farsi and history. His family decided to seek political asylum in the United States so they moved when he was 15, to San Jose, California, where Hosseini graduated from high school. In his first year of school in the U.S., Khaled Hosseini struggled with English, but his encounter with John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel, //The Grapes of Wrath// brought back his love of literature. So he began to write stories again, this time in English. To try and make a better life for himself and his family, Khaled Hosseini studied biology at Santa Clara University and medicine at the University of California, San Diego. While studying medicine he wrote his first book, //The Kite Runner//, and published it in March of 2003. It then made it to //The New York Times// bestseller list. It also has sold more than 12 million copies and was published in more than 40 different languages. Hosseini continued to practice medicine for a year and a half after his book was published, but took a leave of absence and in 2006 he agreed to serve as a special envoy for the United Nation Commissioner for refugees. Where he assisted displaced people in war zones around the world. Since his 2003 visit to Afghanistan, Hosseini had been at work on a second novel called, //A Thousand Splendid Suns// which was published in 2007. The book focuses on the experience of women in pre-war Afghanistan, during the soviet occupation and the civil war,under the taliban dictatorship.

media type="custom" key="5475141"

[|www.khaledhosseini.com] [|www.achievement.org]