Just a few years ago, Khaled Hosseini was a physician living a quiet life with his family in California. That changed almost overnight in 2003 with the publication of “The Kite Runner,” the story of two boys living in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion.
In 2007, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” won equally glowing reviews. Both novels – riveting page-turners that give Afghanistan a human face – have made Hosseini a book-club favorite who's even earned a place on high school English reading lists.
Now at work on a third novel, Hosseini's using his fame to bring attention and resources to his battered native country. He'll be in Charlotte this week to speak at the Novello Festival of Reading, 7 p.m. Wednesday at Ovens Auditorium.
Recently, Hosseini spoke to me by phone from his California home. He gets hundreds of questions from fans on his Web site. I wondered if there was anything he's never been asked.
“I've probably heard everything that I both wanted and didn't want to hear,” he told me. “I'm not sure what's left. I've even heard ‘Boxers or briefs?' I think that gives you an idea.”
The interview is edited for length and clarity.
Q. When you wrote “The Kite Runner,” you'd been gone from Afghanistan since childhood. How did you create such vivid scenes?
Well, I left when I was 11. So I spent those important, formative years of my childhood in Afghanistan. When I sat down to write that novel, it was amazing to me how vivid my memories were of that time and place – Afghanistan circa 1970, prior to the Soviet invasion.
The first hundred pages or so take place in that era in Afghanistan. I virtually had no research to do, because I could simply rely on my memories of growing up, going to the movies, flying those kites, going to the bookstore. I could remember what it smelled like to walk down to the market, and what it was like in the morning after it snowed overnight in Kabul.
Q. You returned for the first time in 2003 and got much of your material for “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Was that planned?
Oh, it wasn't planned at all. (The visit) was not for any purposes of research. It was largely for my own enlightenment, trying to give a human dimension to my understanding of what happened there.
It was not like I was going around interviewing people. I was talking to people you encounter on the streets. And the people were extremely generous and vocal about their own particular stories.
About a year later, when I sat down to write that book, I suddenly realized I had this wealth of anecdotes and memories and stories and voices that I could tap into to create that world.
Q. In “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” was Mariam based on anyone you met?
Neither of the women (Mariam or Laila) is based on anyone I met. Rather, they're based on this kind of collective voice I have in my head after returning from Afghanistan.
The experience these women had in some ways was so universal – the sense of being detached from society, the sense of helplessness and hopelessness, the sense of being dominated and abused and so on. Unfortunately, it's far too common a story.
Q. “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is told from the point of view of the two main female characters. Was it difficult to write from a woman's point of view?
It was almost crippling, in fact, because I was so obsessed with trying to get an authentic voice and make sure I don't sound like a man. The more I struggled with it, the harder it became, and the more self-conscious I became, and the more stupid the writing turned out.
At some point, I gave up, and said I'm just going to write these characters as people and just focus on who these people are, what is it they're afraid of, what is it they're hoping for, what are they aching for, and what do they want from life.
Once I focused on these core human issues, then suddenly the characters wrote themselves. To my very pleasant surprise, I noticed the characters kind of getting away from me, in the sense they suddenly were becoming people who controlled the writing.
It was quite a nice watershed moment.
Q. Rasheed, who marries Mariam and then Laila, does many despicable things, including beating his wives. As you created this character, did you feel any sympathy for him?
I do in the sense that he's a byproduct of a way of life that exists in certain parts of Afghanistan. And we're all shaped to the extent that our environment shapes us.
He's a kind of byproduct of a set of cultural beliefs where everything masculine is prized and women are considered second- and even third-class citizens.
He's sad and pathetic, but he's also capable of tenderness with his son. So yeah, I wanted to write him as a character that maybe you hated but to some extent you kind of felt sorry for.
Q. When you wrote “The Kite Runner,” you had to steal hours in the early morning to write before heading off to your job as a doctor. What's your writing routine these days?
When I was a physician, I was writing largely between 5 and 8 a.m. and on weekends when I got a chance.
But it's evolved because my kids are growing up. Now I have a boy who's 7. My daughter's 5. So, in the morning, I've got to get them ready for school. So I really don't get to work until 8:30, 9 a.m. I pretty much try and work 'til about 3.
Usually if I get three pages done, I'm very satisfied.
It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to – worrying that things aren't going to work out. That you're on the wrong track. It's incessant. That's basically what it is.
Q. Sounds fun….
Every once in a while, there are days you're on a roll, and you really are transported. And you look out the window, and the sun has moved, and you kind of forgot how it happened. Those days are very, very special.
Q. Your father was a diplomat, and you moved from Afghanistan as a child, before things fell apart. Have you felt guilty that you were able to leave?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that's something that's not uncommon among the people who fled Afghanistan, because while we were living in comfort and relative ease in the U.S., the country back home was unraveling. There's a sense of wondering whether you've made the most of the opportunity that you were given.
And in fact that shows all over the pages of “The Kite Runner.”
But I think there are two kinds of guilt. There's the kind that just keeps eating away at you. And there's the kind you turn around and use as a motivation.
So that's what I've tried to do in the last few years. I've tried to use this opportunity to help people in Afghanistan who did suffer through the wars and who did become rootless and homeless and displaced and lost all their possessions and family members.
Q. You're a special envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Tell me about that and what Americans can do to help people in Afghanistan.
The question came up quite a lot in e-mails I was receiving from readers, so eventually I had to put up a page on my Web site (www.khaledhosseini.com) and there listed organizations that I've had some involvement with.
The best thing to do is send money.
We went to Afghanistan about a year ago and visited villages where refugees have returned and settled in northern Afghanistan. Refugees come back, and many are homeless and landless, jobless.
I'm also starting my own foundation for various causes in Afghanistan. Most will focus on women and children.
I've been working with a couple of grassroots organizations to build a school and to help rebuild this village, this little town. So it's been great.
It goes back to what I said earlier about being able to extend my own personal and private blessing to others. It's been very rewarding. It's not nearly enough. It never feels like it's enough.
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