Khaled Hosseini: Why he is My Favorite Author

An author who writes somewhere in between facts and fiction! He shows us a dream, or rather a nightmare, not far away from someone’s reality. You wonder why Khaled Hosseini is my favorite author.

Did you hear the news that the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul? You must have heard that the Afghan president fled the country. If you are wondering what’s going to happen to the Afghan people now, you’d be surprised to know that this has not happened for the first time. Taliban had occupied Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the unfortunate mass exodus that followed gave birth to one of my favorite authors Khaled Hosseini.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan in a well-to-do family. His father was a diplomat, so when Russia invaded Afghanistan, they could escape the country. Hosseini moved to the United States of America, and there he wrote his first novel ‘The Kite Runner’ in 2003. Even if one doesn’t like to read books much, who doesn’t like a good story? A good author gives life to the characters of his story. Hosseini, through his books, shows us how the lives of Afghan people turned around after the Russian invasion and the subsequent wars that devastated the country.

I was introduced to him through his second novel, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ when a friend suggested I read it. The book starts with the story of a teenage girl Mariam, who lives in the city of Herat. She is an illegitimate child and is forcefully married to a shoemaker in Kabul. There is another girl in the story, Laila. She gets married to Mariam’s husband later in life. She is like a daughter to Mariam. The story revolves around their relationship and the life of people in the cities of Afghanistan during the time. It illustrates how the Taliban occupation affected people’s lives in general and women’s in particular. The way he portrayed the characters of his novel made me feel that I was living with them in the city of Kabul. I could visualize their ruined lives, those razed cities, and I could feel the pain that they had gone through. Khaled made me see their hardships through his words, and that makes him my favorite author.

Khaled Hosseini has written three novels revolving around the lives of Afghan people. Of the three, I like his ‘The Kite Runner’ the most. While in the foreground, it shows the friendship of Amir and Hassan, two young boys in Kabul. The backdrop shows the fall of Afghanistan and the mass exodus of people. The story feels so real that I still find it hard to believe that it is fiction. It portrays an interesting contrast where on the one hand, it shows the beauty of human connections, and on the other, it shows how a person can turn into a demon. Like Khalid himself, the protagonist of the story, Amir hails from a well-to-do family and could escape Afghanistan when things went south. Hassan, on the other hand, is the son of Amir’s father’s servant. He stayed in Afghanistan and faced what life had to offer. Their stories go on to converge again after many years.

I am not an avid reader, but I have read several books in my life, and I envy how authors portray their characters so beautifully. I get surprised at the way they form the image of their characters in our minds. The way they explain every little detail of the characters and their surroundings. Khaled Hosseini is a genius when it comes to such portrayal. He showed us the lives of Afghan people and made us feel what they felt, through his books.