Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini is married to Roya, with whom he has had two children named Farah and Haris. The family lives together in Northern California.

He has founded the ‘Khaled Hosseini Foundation’ to assist Afghan children and refugees.

His books have sold over thirty eight million copies of his novels in over seventy countries.

Khlaed Hosseini grew up in Kabul the oldest of the five children born to his father, Nasser, who worked as a diplomat in Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hosseini's mother worked at an all-girls high school teaching the Persian language.

With their careers, Hosseini's parents afforded the boy a life of privilege, living in the middle class neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan - one of the wealthiest parts of Kabul and where the American embassy is located. Nasser moved Khaled and his family to Paris in 1976 after securing a job in the city.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1980, the Hosseini family secured political asylum in the United States and moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini studied biology at ‘Santa Clara University’ and earned a bachelor's degree from the school eight years later.

In 1999, he attended the ‘School of Medicine’ at the ‘University of California’, San Diego. There he earned his M.D. in four years. It was at the ‘Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’ where Hosseini began and completed his residency in internal medicine, continuing on to practice for over 10 years.

While practicing medicine, Hosseini wrote his first novel, 'The Kite Runner,' which told the tale of a young boy dealing with a traumatic youth and a distant father spanning the distance from Afghanistan to California.

Hosseini gave up his medical practice a year and a half after releasing the novel and began work on a second, becoming a full time writer.

A Thousand Splendid Suns,' published in 2007 covered a greater expanse - both literal and figurative - to the story told in 'The Kite Runner,' covering over fifty years of time and the lives of two characters. As the protagonists were women, this novel presented a more feminine perspective, and highlighted the discrimination pervading in Afghan culture.

The Kite Runner' was adapted into a film in 2007, directed by Marc Forster - Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantam of Solace. Hosseini made a cameo appearance in the film.

The Kite Runner' was released in 2003 to great acclaim and popularity. It sat at first on the New York Times Best Seller list for 4 weeks and was adapted into a hit Hollywood film making almost quadruple its filming budget.