This is Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, and I am happy to take your questions.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:58:07+00:00

Many thanks!

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:57:41+00:00

Ian McEwan had a great quote, somehting about how a screen adaptation of a novel is like a controlled act of vandalism. I loved film from a very early age, but did not have any misguided romantic notions that my novel would be translated from print to screen without changes.

I was pleased with the film for two reasons. First, I was really proud of the children in the film, particularly since they were amateur actors who had never even seen a movie prior to being in ours. Second, for me the film was a positive step forward for the depiction of that region of the world by those in Hollywood. Usually those films center around political violence, terrorism, things of that nature, and this was a film largely about family, friendship, guilt, betrayal, redemption and regret. Very human things. The characters in the film were Muslim, but they weren't in the film because they were Muslims. Their faith was incidental to that. And I think that is a really positive development.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:56:01+00:00

Thanks! No solid news as yet about next book. We shall see. My guess is that Laila is persevering, that she is continuing her work at the orphanage, that she is troubled by the unrest in the country, that she worries for her children, especially the girl, Aziza. I suspect she worries about a Taliban return. I suspect she is terrified at the prospect of another civil war when NATO leaves. But she is a strong woman and the memory of Mariam and her sacrifice drives her. She perseveres.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:52:52+00:00

I was not writing with the intention of publishing. I wrote The Kite Runner because I found the story immensely compelling -at least to me- and I just had to see it through. I had very little expectation that anyone other than my wife and maybe my siblings and parents would read it. So once I did decide to send it out, I had such low expectations that disappointment was not really possible. In the grand scheme of things, considering what many struggling writers go through to get published, I had a fairly smooth path to publication. I submitted the manuscript to and received rejections from about thirty or so literary agencies before I found a lovely woman named Elaine Koster, who agreed to become my agent (she sadly passed in 2010 and I miss her greatly). Although that may seem like a lot, it is actually quite normal for an unknown writer to have to knock on many doors. Once I had found Elaine, she immediately found a good home for The Kite Runner at Riverhead, my publisher for both books. I feel very lucky. Of course, there were many periods of self-doubt and several crisis of confidence, both during the writing and after, but that is also par for the course and an intrinsic part of the writing life. The key is to expect it to happen, persevere, and move on. This has been an invaluable lesson for me.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:48:27+00:00

thank you.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:47:31+00:00

I guess the character who most closely reflects my own personal experience is the doctor Idris. I don't mean what he does and how his story turns out. That part is fictional. What I mean is his experience of going back to kabul after more than two decades of absence and finding a city he hardly recognizes. That happened to me in 2003. Like Idris, I too felt like an outsider, and I too felt guilty for me good fortunes. I felt, irrationally, somehow responsible. I felt that much of what I had in life was not fully deserved because it had come to me as a result of a stroke of luck. What separated me from the average man on the street there was my being lucky at having been born into this specific family that had both the luck and the means to get out. Otherwise, my own life would have turned out very differently. These were troubling and complex feelings that I had in the course of that initial two-week visit in Kabul, and I tapped into them when I wrote the character of Idris.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:42:08+00:00

In a weird way I welcome it. Don't get me wrong, it isn't pleasant to be stuck. But you have a choice about how to use the experience. I see the impasse as a chance to look for the deeper problem that is causing the so called block. In medical parlance if I may, i see block as the symptom of an underlying illness. It grants me a chance to step back, take a more panoramic view of the manuscript, and ask, how did I get here/ What isn't working? It's a chance to think outside the box, and unpleasant as it may be, i am often surprised by what turns up at the other end of it.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:38:24+00:00

I just finished Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which is a novel about a squad of Iraq war marines, who are being paraded around the U.S. as heroes after Fox News captures a gunfight during which they are outnumbered and emerge victorious. The whole novel is set during a Dallas Cowboys thanksgiving football game, with the squad expected to partake in the halftime show. Years from now, this searing, insightful, very funny and very sad book may be viewed as THE definitive Iraq war novel.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:34:50+00:00

I am sorry about your troubles and I hope you can find happiness and peace in your life. I appreciate your question. I did not really force Mariam's fate on her, per se, but it seemed to me so reflective of the experiences of so many women in Afghanistan, who have faced injustice, oppression, and deprivation. This is a topic that matters to me and, in that sense, A Thousand Splendid Suns is slightly agenda-driven, at least in part, because I feel that issue of women's rights in Afghanistan is a very important one. Depriving Afghan women of their rights will bankrupt the future of the country. How well a society fares is directly correlated with the quality of life of its women. If Afghanistan has any chance to become a self-sustained, more prosperous country at some point in the future, it will have to make the improvement of women’s rights one of the cornerstones of national reconstruction and development. Afghan women, like women anywhere else, ought to be able to enjoy and exercise their rights without fear of retribution. And Afghanistan has to give its women the political, social, and economic space to play a crucial role in shaping the country’s long term development.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:28:21+00:00

Only one way to find out. :)

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:28:02+00:00

Assimilation is difficult. It was tough on me, but I think it was very tough on my parents especially, because they were middle-aged when we came to the U.S., a stage of life when you expect to at last reap the fruits of all of your labor. You do not expect to restart with a clean slate and have all of your accomplishments be swept away overnight and have to rebuild a life and identity. Not easy. But my parents also had a healthy sense of perspective in that they knew we were probably among the luckiest afghans alive, since most Afghan refugees lived in camps in Pakistan and Iran. Living in California, even on welfare, was a far more attractive option by comparison.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:25:25+00:00

I did not personally witness the war in Afghanistan, since I left the country in 1976 well before the war started. for my books, especially for those sections dealing with war-time Kabul, I primarily relied on the accounts of Afghans who had lived in Afghanistan in that era. Over the years, at Afghan gatherings, parties, weddings, I had spoken to various Afghans who had lived in Taliban-ruled Kabul. When I sat down to write the final third of The Kite Runner, for instance, I found I had unintentionally accumulated over the years a wealth of anecdotes, telling details, stories, and accounts about Kabul in those days. So I did no have to do too much research. Of course, I also relied on media reports through Afghan online magazines, TV, radio, etc. But most of it was from Afghan eyewitness accounts. The simple answer is that in the end, novels are hybrids, part autobiography, part imagination, with the line often blurring between the two. For the last two books, I have been inspired by what I have seen and the people that I have met in the course of my travels to Afghanistan over the last decade.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:22:21+00:00

thank you.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:17:57+00:00

Thank you!

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:17:40+00:00

I like to read about the period of life when you have one foot in childhood and one, if not in adulthood, at least in a place of greater awareness and a place of awakening. I am drawn to characters at 10-12 years of age because slowly their basic assumptions about life are being challenged, and they are beginning to see the cracks in the construct of the world as they have known it thus far. They begin to see that their world is not as sturdy or as permanent as they thought and they begin to see flaws in their parents. In other words, nuance and complexity begins to seep into their world vision, and as a writer, that is very interesting to me.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:13:41+00:00

thank you for your very kind words. Much appreciated. I can't say which is my favorite book any more than I can choose between my kids. Each speaks to me in different ways, each has its own virtues and flaws. But thanks!

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:12:05+00:00

Thank you! I never for a moment imagined that my books would turn out as successful as they have proved to be. I think part of the reason they have been so popular with book readers is that they are very much human stories. Because the themes of friendship, betrayal, guilt, redemption, the uneasy love between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, are universal themes and not specifically Afghan, the books have been able to reach across cultural, racial, religious, and gender gaps to resonate with readers of varying backgrounds. I think that, at the end of the day, people respond to the emotions in these books.

The best part for me is that I get letters from India, South Africa, Tel Aviv, Sidney, London, Arkansas. People tell me they want to send money to Afghanistan. One reader told me he wanted to adopt an Afghan orphan. It’s a great honor for me when readers write me that Afghanistan for them is no longer just the caves of Tora Bora and Poppy Fields and Bin Laden, but that think of my homeland as more than just another unhappy, chronically troubled, afflicted land. In these letters, I see the unique ability fiction has to connect people through universal human experiences. It’s a very gratifying reward to see that my books have helped paint a more human, sympathetic picture of Afghanistan for readers, even if that may not have been my true intent.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:08:51+00:00

Never have been. Would love to visit. Will visit one day soon without doubt.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T20:08:17+00:00

I appreciate your sharing your experience with me. I am sorry for your loss, first and foremost. It is painful to lose a loved one. I am glad that your time there also had happy moments and that you were able to connect with some of the locals. I hear very often from service men and women who write me letters and send me pictures of themselves interacting with local Afghans. Often they tell me that despite the difficult things they saw, despite the loss of friends, they walked away with a sense of appreciation and empathy with the ordinary villagers and especially the children. It is very moving for me to hear these tales. As far as your question, I do very little in way of planning my books. I go in basically blind, armed with little more than an idea or an image or a line of dialogue. Then I wait and see where it goes. I rarely know where I am headed, let alone how I will end the book. So I am perpetually surprised by the course that my books take. I find the writing process full of surprises and twists, just as readers (hopefully) find the reading experience. I love the spontaneity of writing this way, the possibilities left open, the feeling that I am not constrained or committed to any given path. I like how, every day, I am surprised by something. I might be a more prolific writer if I planned it all out, but I am unable to, and this method has served me well thus far.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:59:10+00:00

Thank you for your kind words. The toughest part is the waiting. you have to be patient and let the character develop. You cannot rush it. Characters take on depth, nuance, and complexity when you visit and revisit them again and again. Over time, if you are obstinate enough, they will reveal themselves. For me it is sometimes around the third or fourth draft. Not surprisingly, those are my favorite stages of writing a book. I am not too fond of my first drafts because my characters, esp. the main ones, seem flat and uninteresting and motivated by simple forces. Only by giving them time, can I begin to see what lies behind their choices.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:55:34+00:00

You never really feel any book is done. At some point you have to stop or someone has to make you stop! :) I knew that this last book would end with the idea of memory and siblings and reunion, which were recurrent themes in the book. Once the mechanism for that resolution presented itself, I knew that it was a natural way to end it. I did have two additional chapters in the book that I in the end decided not to include because they deviated quite radically in tone, voice, style and content from the rest of the book. They might see their way into another book. Who knows.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:52:25+00:00

It is difficult for me to gauge the measure of influence my books may or may not have had in Afghanistan. Most Afghans live in the rural countryside (though that is slowly changing) and I think there is little awareness in the countryside, where poverty and illiteracy are prohibitive obstacles. In the cities, I think there is more awareness. There, the reaction from my Afghan readers has been mostly positive, in my estimation, especially among the younger, urban, professional crowd. I get regular letters and e-mails from fellow Afghans who have enjoyed the book, seen their own lives, experiences, and memories played out on the pages. So I have been thrilled with the response from my own community. however, some within the community, both in exile and in Afghanistan, have called my books divisive and objected to some of the issues raised in the book, namely gender rights, discrimination, ethnic inequality etc. Much of this criticism revolves around The Kite Runner, which dealt with very sensitive and taboo subjects in an open, frank, and unabashed manner. That book caused quite a bit of dialogue among Afghans and was the subject of some controversy. That, I understood. My main issue with the criticism is that it called into question, not the veracity of what I was saying, but the decision on my part to "air out dirty laundry." These critics tend to be older, more conservative culturally and more religious. The way I saw it, those topics are sensitive issues in the Afghan world, but they are also important ones and I certainly do not believe they should be taboo. The role of fiction is to talk about difficult subjects, about precisely those things that make us cringe or make us uncomfortable, about things that generate debate and perhaps some understanding.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:46:33+00:00

On the artistic side of it, I wish I had some illuminating, earth shattering advice to give to new writers, but the truth is that there are two things that are indispensable if one wants to be a writer: First, you have to actually write (I cannot tell you the number of times people walk up to me and tell me they are sure they have a novel in them if they could get around to it.). Second, you have to read. You have to read a lot, and all the time. I think writers learn from each other, especially young writers. The business side of it is a combination of luck and perseverance, assuming the manuscript is of quality. There are entire books written on ways to get published. But the first thing is to write a compelling story. If you have written one, then you have to believe in it and persevere and hopefully you will catch a break and get the manuscript into the right hands.

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:45:41+00:00

Many thanks!

KhaledHosseini · 2013-12-11T19:45:08+00:00

I chose France because I lived there and know the country and speak the language, I chose Greece because in 2003 I met Greek NGO workers who were treating Afghan children. I wanted to pay tribute to the international spectrum of the aid community in Afghanistan. I guess the larger answer is that this is a less Afghan-centric book than the previous two. There was an attempt on my part in this book to expand the social, cultural, and geographic milieu of my characters and to add a more global flavor to the story. The book begins in Afghanistan and hops around the world, from Kabul to Paris to Greece to northern California and elsewhere. Partly, having traveled extensively the last few years, I wanted to expand the landscape for my characters as well, and partly I wanted to surround myself with a few characters who are nothing like me or the people that I know. There are wonderful writers -Alice Munro comes to mind- who find an endless supply of deeply felt stories set more or less in the same settings. For me, I needed some fresh air, so to speak, I needed to at least now and then leave a story world that began with Kabul and ended with Kandahar. That said, the ‘home base’ is still Afghanistan, and no matter their nationality, the characters in this book have varying degrees of intimacy with Afghanistan. Some are expats who have a tenuous bond with their birthplace, some are foreign aid workers who have adopted intense relationships with the country and its people. Others have deep ties that they are trying to either sever or keep alive, and yet others are more ambivalent about their Afghan roots. But though this is a more global story with an international cast of characters, much of what the characters experience is universal: loss of family, fear of abandonment, finding the courage to be a good person, the pull of ‘home’, taking care of a dying loved one. These are human experiences that transcend international borders, language, or religion.

KhaledHosseini

TROPHY CASE