Khaled Hosseini

Published in more than seventy countries. The Kite Runner alone spent more than five years on The New York Times bestseller list. Khaled’s much-anticipated third novel And the Mountains Echoed was called “his most ambitious novel yet” by Entertainment Weekly. In 2018, he released Sea Prayer, an illustrated work of fiction that responds to the heartbreak of the current refugee crisis. Khaled donated proceeds from the book to the UNHCR and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Khaled’s father was a diplomat. In 1976 his family moved to France after his father was assigned to the Afghan Embassy in Paris. Later, in 1980 when the Hosseini’s prepared to return home, they found the country they had left in the midst of war. His family was then granted political asylum in the United States and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Though his first love has always been writing, Khaled eventually went to medical school. “I wanted to be a writer in a way a kid would say ‘I want to be president.’ It just seemed untouchable,” he has said. Following the extraordinary success of his first novel Khaled was able to leave medical practice to write full time.

The themes of his novels address with great humanity the struggles of his homeland and her people. In 2006 he was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Through his work with that agency as well as with his own foundation he has provided aid and support to the people of Afghanistan, particularly women, children and homeless refugees.