tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1 2008-11-28T17:53:37Z Movable Type 3.35 tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.7 2008-11-28T17:40:45Z 2008-11-28T17:53:37Z

Dear Readers: I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. In the spirit of the season, I am thankful for all the support and encouragement that I have received from you over...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and built a primary school in Arababshirali, in northern Afghanistan. The school, which will benefit 270 students, will be a sanctuary of hope and happiness for many children. I was in northern Afghanistan last year and recall vividly that one of the main wishes of virtually everyone I met was for a local school. Afghan children are eager and hungry for education. They apply themselves very hard and take pride in their work. Many of them walk long distances and overcome many obstacles (not the least of which is threats from the Taliban) to learn to read and write and for the chance to contribute to their country. This school will be a godsend. It’s very humbling. ]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns is out on paperback on November 25th. I will be visiting New York to promote the book next week. If you fancy a laugh or two, I will be on The Colbert Report on December 1st. I approach the interview with equal measures of giddiness and anxiety. You never know what he has up his sleeve! Finally, a word on the “Suns” film. A first draft of the script is done and the search is on for a director. When there are more updates, I will post them here. Many thanks, once more. Have a happy and healthy Holiday season. Speak to you soon. Khaled For the First Time Ever, Penguin Group (USA) Has Built a School, Grades One Through Six, Honoring American Booksellers, Librarians, and Educators Who Supported Khaled Hosseini's #1 New York Times-Bestselling and Internationally Acclaimed Novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. New York , New York , November 19, 2008 . . . Penguin Group (USA), a member of the Penguin Group, one of the world's largest English-language consumer trade book publishers, is proud to announce that it has built a primary school in Afghanistan, in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United States Association for UNHCR. The school is located in Arababshirali, roughly 150 miles from Kabul , in Kunduz Province. The school, which recently opened its doors to 270 students, grades one through six, is a tribute to American booksellers, librarians, and educators who supported Khaled Hosseini's #1 New York Times-bestselling and internationally acclaimed novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, published by Riverhead Books, an award-winning and critically acclaimed imprint of Penguin Group (USA). In 2001, while still a practicing internist, Khaled Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner. Two years later, it was published in hardcover by Riverhead Books, and followed by a #1 New York Times-bestselling trade paperback edition a year later. It has since become a critically acclaimed international bestseller, published in forty-eight countries, with more than 6.75 million copies shipped to date in the U.S. market alone. It has also been credited with leading readers far and wide to a heightened consciousness about Afghanistan, its culture, and its people. In 2006, Hosseini was honored by the UN Refugee Agency and named a U.S. envoy to the UNHCR. In this role, he traveled to war-torn villages in the northern region of his native Afghanistan in 2007. During this trip he witnessed firsthand the overwhelming desire of Afghan people to provide an education and a better future for their children. Now, in 2008, Penguin Group (USA) is proud to play a key role in turning that desire into a reality. Susan Petersen Kennedy, President of Penguin Group ( USA ), commented: "Changing the world can sometimes start with a single act of kindness. Our hope is that this new school is one of those acts. We know that the children it serves will contribute to their world and ours, and we wanted to help provide a place where they can learn, grow, and dream. For us, education matters, books matter, and these children matter." Mrs. Kennedy continued, "We are grateful to our author, Khaled Hosseini, and UNHCR for making this gift possible, and for inspiring us and enriching our view of the needs and struggles faced by families in Afghanistan . As an international publisher, Penguin Group is committed to making a difference in communities worldwide by embracing those differences that exist among us. It is often through the voices of our authors, such as Khaled Hosseini, and their books, that we discover the connections we have to each other." Khaled Hosseini said, "Novels evoke universal human experiences. They are uniquely suited to create empathy and understanding between people of different cultural and religious backgrounds. Over the past few years, I have been humbled by the outpouring of empathy and compassion from my readers for the people of my homeland. It is a great honor to me when readers write me to say that they have found a personal connection to Afghanistan and the suffering of its people through my novels. To me, this school is the physical expression of that connection." Ground was broken for the school earlier this year, and its construction provided much-needed employment for men in the village of Arababshirali . Now completed and open to students, the schoolhouse has six classrooms and is staffed by six teachers, four women and two men. Approximately 270 Afghan students, in grades one through six, now regularly attend classes. Despite anonymous threats demanding that they not be allowed to attend, girls make up a third of the enrollment. Before the school was completed, students were taught by teachers outside, often under shade trees or in tents that served as makeshift classrooms. Mohammad Wazir, the head of Arababshirali's governing council, said, "We are very, very grateful to all the people in America who gave us our school. We will do our best to make sure that all of our children grow up to read and love books. The year has been difficult, but building the school has given us hope that things will get better and that our children will take pride in being home. The villagers worked for three months to build the school, and we will make sure it stands for the children of our children. It is for all of us. We are thankful." According to Michael Coburn, Associate Director, USA for UNHCR, "With hundreds of children at primary-school age in the village, there was no school structure available for them to learn. In fact, the children attended classes either outdoors or in a destroyed primary school. The new primary school is an absolute blessing. UNHCR can now ensure the children have a proper shelter, infrastructure, and resources to receive an education, which is the essential tool to help build a better future for the children of Afghanistan . The whole village is extremely grateful." Geoffrey Kloske, Vice President and Publisher, Riverhead Books, added, "Khaled Hosseini's books have brought the lives and concerns of the Afghan people vividly to life to American readers, booksellers, librarians, educators, and reviewers. We wanted to acknowledge and pay tribute to as many of these people as we could with our gift to UNHCR. We are sincerely grateful to Khaled Hosseini for inspiring us to turn our attention to a community in need halfway around the world. We are honored to be working so closely with Khaled and UNHCR to provide a more fertile learning environment for the children of Afghanistan , who may very well become our leaders of tomorrow." More than 350 booksellers, librarians, and educators across the United States were recognized for their support of Hosseini's #1 New York Times-bestselling first novel, The Kite Runner, with personalized donation certificates that read "Some novels make a world of difference," each signed by Hosseini. ]]> tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.6 2008-10-11T18:40:17Z 2008-10-11T18:48:09Z

Hello everyone: First, many many thanks for your visits to this website and for your entries, which I appreciate very much. An update first. The paperback edition of A Thousand Splendid Suns will be published on November 25th of this...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com A Thousand Splendid Suns will be published on November 25th of this year. In early December, I will make a few public appearances in its support. The dates and venues have not been decided upon as yet. When I have details, I will post them on this website. I thank you for your continued support and patience. Secondly, The Kite Runner will become a stage production at the San Jose Repertory Theater in the spring of 2009. The script is written by Matthew Spangler who directs and teaches drama at San Jose State. Casting searches for the play will begin later this month. Needless to say, I am thrilled and look forward to this production very much. I will be involved with the production at some capacity, which I have not as yet determined. Lastly, I want to discuss Afghanistan, particularly in light of this being an election season and Afghanistan coming up in all of the presidential debates. ]]> You see, this is a question that invariably comes up every time I step before a podium. At some point, someone in the audience will raise their hand, and say, “So, Mr. Hosseini, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Afghanistan?” The first thing I do is remind the audience that I am not a political expert on Afghanistan. I am a novelist. My focus is the inner lives of the characters I have created in my books –which makes me spectacularly under-qualified to answer a question of such magnitude. But even as I say these words –and they are true- I know that I am delaying answering the question. I delay because I don’t know anymore. There is plenty going in Afghanistan to fuel pessimism. I went to Afghanistan in September 2007 with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and I saw for myself the high blast walls on the streets of Kabul, aimed at protecting against suicide attacks. Those walls did not exist the last time I was in Kabul, back in the spring of 2003, and I did not feel at that time the unease I did this time when I walked through crowded streets and bazaars. I saw the thousands of young people in Kabul living in slums without work, without direction. In northern Afghanistan, I met homeless families of twenty or more who had spent the past two winters cooped up in holes they had dug under ground. In village after village between Kunduz and Mazar, I met people who had no access to clean water, to a school for their children, to a clinic for their sick, families who lived on less than $1 per day -that is, if they could find work –and who received little or no help from a weak central government still struggling badly to meet the basic needs of its people. The violent insurgency in Afghanistan is spiraling. More U.S. troops are dying today in Afghanistan than they are in Iraq. More Afghan civilians have been killed this year than any other year since the post-9/11 invasion –according to the U.N. more than 1,500 Afghan civilians have been killed, in many cases mainly women and children. Narcotic trade, financing the insurgency, has also skyrocketed. Opium now accounts for close to half of the country’s GDP. There is rampant corruption, poverty, and very troublingly, growing resentment for NATO and the U.S. –thanks partly to the perception that promises made were not kept, and thanks partly to the catastrophic bombing strikes that have claimed innocent civilian lives. Think tanks such as The Atlantic Council have called Afghanistan a failing state, and the top British commander in Afghanistan believes the war cannot be won. It is a sobering picture. But unadulterated pessimism about the situation hardly takes an intellectual leap. And it must be said that positive developments that have taken place over the last seven years. When I visited Kabul in the spring of 2003, it looked like a war zone, a grim landscape of jagged debris, flattened buildings, and roofless walls. The Kabul I saw last year looks dramatically improved. Many of the neighborhoods destroyed during the Mujahideen infighting years have been rebuilt. I was happily surprised to visit cultural landmarks, like the famed gardens of Babur, and find them successfully renovated. In many towns, I saw children in uniform walking to school. School enrollment, in fact, has increased to more than 6 million children over the last five years –this bodes well for the future of Afghanistan. Landmines are being cleared, the press is relatively free (if under attack by religious conservatives), and telecommunication is booming (even in the poorest, most remote villages, I had the surreal experience of seeing old men in tattered clothes speaking on cell phones.) But even as we address questions of pessimism or optimism, we must remember that it may be too early to have a genuine answer. Afghanistan, after all, is a country that is still recovering from nearly thirty years of war, famine, drought, extremism, lawlessness, and massive displacement. What is certain is that the future is uncertain. Whether the U.S. and NATO can defeat the Taliban insurgency, solve the opium problem, rebuild Afghanistan, and help it to some reasonable semblance of a democracy remains to be seen. But this much we do know: Without a genuine and sustained, long-term commitment on the part of the U.S. and its allies, Afghanistan is doomed. Though Afghans are an independent people and take pride in their sovereignty, polls have repeatedly shown that, despite growing skepticism and disillusionment, the majority of Afghans still view the foreign presence in their country favorably. They know that a weakened western resolve will mean that positive gains that have been made so painstakingly will vanish swiftly and the country will slide back. I am encouraged by Senator Obama’s calls for refocusing attention on Afghanistan before it completely slips out of control. He has called for military reinforcement in Afghanistan and vows to hold the Afghan government accountable for its own shortcomings. These are positive developments. But I think the senator understands that there will be no pure military situation in Afghanistan. Where the west has truly failed has been in the civil sector. We have failed to build a competent and legitimate police force, to curb the heroin trade, to build homes and jobs and help the government establish its credibility beyond the borders of Kabul. It is time to not think of Afghanistan as purely a military mission but as a humanitarian mission as well. To use an old cliché, that is the only way to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, to win their support and loyalty, and to demonstrate to them that they are better off with us than they were with the Taliban. All of this will take time. Not months, years, but perhaps decades. The rebuilding of Afghanistan is, to use a belated Olympic analogy, a marathon, not a hundred meter dash. So optimistic or pessimistic? Ask me in twenty years. Thanks, as ever, for your support and encouragement. Khaled tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.5 2008-07-16T18:46:36Z 2008-07-16T19:28:50Z

Dear Readers: “A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive.” This is the motto of the Kabul Museum , recently printed in bold letters on a banner above the entrance. In that spirit, I want to draw attention to...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com Afghanistan, Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul. The exhibition consists of more than 22,000 ancient objects of gold, a collection that includes exquisite and priceless artifacts dating back more than 2,000 years. The exhibit highlights Afghanistan’s rich past as a dynamic economic power in the Silk Road culture and its fascinating cultural history.]]> City of Thieves , a novel set in the siege of Leningrad . It is an amazing story and a riveting read. I read it on a long transatlantic flight to France . I think I looked up from the pages about three times. Highly recommended. ]]> tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.4 2008-05-20T22:13:05Z 2008-05-21T22:44:04Z

Dear Readers: I want to take this chance to thank all of the readers who submitted questions for the Book Group Discussion. I was thrilled to receive over 600 questions. I thank each and every one of you for your...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com Dear Readers: I want to take this chance to thank all of the readers who submitted questions for the Book Group Discussion. I was thrilled to receive over 600 questions. I thank each and every one of you for your interest in my books and for submitting your questions. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff; City of Thieves by my friend David Benioff; The boat by Nam Le; Laughing Without An Accent, by my friend Firoozeh Dumas; The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. ]]> tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.3 2008-03-31T20:14:29Z 2008-04-03T20:33:58Z

Dear Readers: Thank you, as ever, for your comments and questions. As always, I appreciate hearing from you and am grateful for your encouragement and support. A quick update. Because many of you have asked, I will quickly address the...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com A Thousand Splendid Suns. ]]> Schindler’s List and Searching for Bobby Fisher. The film will be produced over at Sony/Columbia by Producer Scott Rudin, who just won an Oscar for No Country For Old Men. As of now, the matters of casting, location, and language have not been decided. As for me, I am doing quite well, settling down after a few months of traveling –though I will go to Italy tomorrow to do some press for The Kite Runner film which has opened there, and then off to London to attend the British Galaxy Book Awards. After that, I should have a nice stretch of time to stay home, and hopefully write! I want to bring your attention to a story that I feel strongly about. I wrote an op-ed piece about this for The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. A young Afghan journalism student named Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing an article that allegedly insults the tenets of Islam. The article addresses polygamy and questions why men can have multiple spouses but women cannot. A panel of three judges passed the sentence on the basis that the article is blasphemy, and Mr. Kaambakhsh has been in custody for nearly six months, appealing his sentence. This story is disappointing to me as an Afghan. Over the last few years, I have applauded the Afghan government for trying to distance itself from the oppressive rule of the Taliban and for its efforts to give people more personal freedom. But if this sentence is carried out, I think it will be a very significant step backward for Afghanistan . The leaders of Afghanistan cannot claim, on the one hand, that the country is on its way to becoming a free democratic state, and on the other hand execute its own citizens for downloading articles that offend the sensibilities of a few religious clerics. I see this case as an opportunity to show the world that Afghanistan has changed, to demonstrate to those countries that have committed money and troops that zealotry and intolerance have no place in this new Afghanistan. Afghan leaders should not miss this opportunity. So I add my voice to those of organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, and ask that Afghan leaders spare Mr. Kaambakhsh. To let this sentence be carried out would not only by a tragedy for the Kaambakhsh family, but a terrible setback for all of us who hope for a more tolerant and free Afghanistan. That’s it for now. Thank you again for all your kind words and encouragement. Until next time. Khaled P.S. Have read several great book galleys lately, all of which should be in stores soon: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, One More Year, by Sana Krasikov, and Unaccustomed Earth, by the wonderful Jhumpa Lahiri. And for those of you who have not as yet read Dave Eggers’ What is The What, I highly recommend it. It is one of my favorite books of the last decade. ]]> tag:khaledhosseini.com,2008:/blog//1.2 2008-01-11T02:39:10Z 2008-04-03T20:12:14Z

Dear Readers: I first want to wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2008. I hope the new year brings you all the joy, good fortune, and happiness that you wish for. For me, 2007 was an incredibly eventful...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com A Thousand Splendid Suns, back on May 22nd. Many of you have asked me in your e-mails what inspired me to write this novel, and I thought I would say a few words about that. ]]> The Kite Runner, was dominated by men and I knew, even as I was finishing it, that I was going to write about Afghanistan again and that this time I would write about Afghan women. The struggle of Afghan women was simply too compelling, too tragic, and too important and relevant a story, and both as an Afghan and as a writer, I knew that I couldn’t resist writing about it. Then about three months after I finished editing The Kite Runner, in March of 2003, I went back to Kabul, after a twenty-seven year absence. In Kabul, I spoke to a lot of people, hotel doormen, traffic cops, vendors, waiters, people in the government, doctors, nurses, etc. I heard stories about women who had been raped, beaten, imprisoned, humiliated, women who had seen their husbands blown to pieces, seen their kids starve to death. It was then that I saw the devastating effect that anarchy and extremism had had on these women. I saw for myself, for the first time, the enormity of the suffering that these women had endured. And I came away humbled by the fight that these women had in them, by their resilience and their courage. When I sat down to write A Thousand Splendid Suns, early in 2004, I kept hearing those voices in my head, I keep seeing those faces. And so I think that to a large degree, this book was inspired by the collective hardships, struggles, by the collective hopes and dreams of those women I met and spoke to. It my tribute to a group of people who have remained strong and resilient in face of incredible hardship. By far the most difficult aspect of writing A Thousand Splendid Suns was writing a story from the female perspective--actually two female perspectives. I worried quite a lot about getting the voice “right.” I continuously grappled with the notion that a woman inhabits a different social and emotional arena, that a woman’s experience of the world is comprised of unique perceptions and emotions, different from those of a man. I wanted to handle this deftly, and the harder I tried the more self-conscious I became about it, and the less convincing Mariam and Laila’s voices sounded to me. The critical insight for me was to stop thinking of these characters as women per se, but to understand them as human beings, people with fears, hopes, disappointments, etc. I had to understand why Mariam went to Jalil’s house, why she lived with Rasheed and tolerated his meanness and scorn, why she became so attached to Laila and Aziza. The more I understood these things, the less self-conscious the writing became, the more able I was to get drawn out of my own skin and into that of these two women. I would liken it to an act of reverse ventriloquism. When I started, I was the ventriloquist, speaking with my voice through Mariam and Laila. But as I kept writing and understanding the core and essence of these female characters, they became the ventriloquists, speaking through me, as it were. It was a real watershed moment for me as a writer. In the end, I tried to write these women as truthfully and authentically as I could. It is my hope you, as readers, will agree. 2007 was also the year that I returned to Afghanistan, for the first time since 2003. In September, I went to Kabul and drove to various cities in northern Afghanistan with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. We visited Afghan refugees who –like some 5 million Afghans since 2002- had returned home after years of living in Iran and Pakistan. Many of them had returned home buoyed by hope and the promise of opportunity. But for most, life in Afghanistan is proving a daunting challenge. In village after village, I met families who live on bread and dirty water. Their children have no access to education, since the nearest school is often a two hour walk away. When children get diarrhea from drinking river water (roughly half of the country has no access to potable water), they must ride a donkey for hours to get to the nearest clinic. The very poor and the very young often die of exposure during the unforgiving winter months. Unfortunately, the Afghan government is still in its teething stages and does not have as yet the capacity to absorb the millions who have returned. It is stretched to its limits trying to rebuild a country that is still recovering from nearly three decades of war, displacement, and human suffering. This means that the returning refugees have to rely on their own limited resources and the goodwill of their neighbors and families. To make matters worse, Pakistan is closing down its refugee camps and the Iranian government, burdened with illegal Afghan migrant workers, has deported more than 200,000 unregistered Afghans this year. This visit to Afghanistan reminded me of how hopelessly dependent Afghanistan still is on the support of the international community, particularly the west. Afghanistan is at a critical juncture, beset by insurgency in the south and east, rising insecurity, and increasing narcotic trade. More than ever, Afghanistan needs help. This is an election year in the U.S., and it is my hope that the new administration will make a genuine, long-term, and comprehensive commitment to ensure the future of the coming generation in Afghanistan. If you want to learn more about the plight of Afghan refugees, you can visit unrefugees.org. Lastly, 2007 was also the year that the movie version of The Kite Runner was released. I am very proud of the film, not only because it is so faithful to my novel, but also because it is the first film in mainstream Hollywood cinema to focus the narrative on the Afghans themselves. For once, a film about that region of the world is not about terrorism, extremism, or political violence, but about ordinary people, about friendship, family, love, and tolerance. I hope that this film sheds a human and sympathetic light on the face of Afghanistan. I am also very proud of the actors in the film, particularly the children, who have so artfully brought to life Amir, Hassan, Baba, Rahim Khan, etc. I was tremendously proud of Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada (who plays young Hassan) for winning the Critics Choice Award for Best Young Actor. Finally, I am very grateful to The Kite Runner film Social Action Committee for taking steps to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans. Participant Productions and Paramount Vantage, who released the film, have partnered with various NGOs such as Afghanistan Relief Organization, Relief International, and Amnesty International to train 1,000 Afghan teachers over the next two years and to build fifty rural libraries in Afghanistan. It is very gratifying to me that the film version of The Kite Runner will have a positive impact on the lives of people in Afghanistan. To learn more about these programs, visit takepart.com and click on The Kite Runner image. Lastly, I want to thank you, the readers, for your continuing support and encouragement. I cannot ever thank you enough. It is a thrill beyond description for me to see these books resonate with so many of you and I am always touched when you take the time to write to me. Please keep writing. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Tashakor! Until next time, Khaled ]]> tag:khaledhosseini.com,2007:/blog//1.1 2007-04-28T22:25:11Z 2008-04-03T20:09:32Z

Dear Readers: Over the last four years, I have traveled across the country and met with thousands of readers like you, who showed up to hear me speak about The Kite Runner. I have received countless letters and e-mails in...

Khaled Hosseini http://khaledhosseini.com The Kite Runner. I have received countless letters and e-mails in support of The Kite Runner, and have always been moved by how passionately readers continue to embrace my first novel. In my encounters with readers--be it in person, or by letter/e-mail--I've answered every imaginable question. But one that kept coming up -and one for which, until recently, I had no answer--was, "When is the new book out?" ]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns. Set in Afghanistan, it is the story of two generations of characters brought together by the tragic sweep of war, with some thirty years of tumultuous recent Afghan history as a backdrop. It is a story about devotion, courage, hope, self-sacrifice, and love. I am tremendously fond and proud of this book, and very much encouraged by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reaction from its early readers. I look forward to sharing A Thousand Splendid Suns with you this May. And perhaps even meeting some of you on the road.]]>