Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a
diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry, and his mother was a teacher. The
family was living in Paris in 1980 when the Russians occupied Afghanistan, and
they were granted political asylum in the United States. They moved to
California, where Hosseini graduated from high school and later earned a degree
in biology from Santa Clara University in 1988. In 1993, Hosseini graduated
from the University of California, San Diego, with a degree in medicine. He
practiced medicine as an internist until 2004.
In his free time, Hosseini began to write. His first novel, The Kite
Runner (2004), was an immediate success, eventually becoming an
international bestseller. Now published in forty-three languages, The Kite
Runner tells the story of the friendship between two boys who grow up in
Afghanistan in the same house but under extremely different circumstances. One
is the son of a wealthy man; the other is the son of one of the house servants.
Their lives reflect the tragedies of Afghanistan as the country changes from
monarchal to Taliban rule.
In 2006, Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to the United Nations Refugee
Agency. He helps refugees not just from Afghanistan but from all over the
world. Some of his most recent work has been in Chad. In May 2007, Hosseini
published his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. Today, Hosseini
lives with his wife and two children in northern California.