War, Taliban, burka, and poverty: you may feel unfamiliar with those words. But what about these words: family, forgiveness, farewell, and growth? These are the most humanistic words we have; they are shared by all people regardless of time and region. The former and latter groups of words make a diametrically different impression, but they have one thing in common. They are the most important keywords in an author’s novels. This author has an amazing ability to make his reader cry with sympathy for non-existent protagonists whom they have never met, by drawing on universal human feelings. His name is Khaled Hosseini. He is a world famous author who writes realistic and touching stories, set against the backdrop of his birthplace, Afghanistan.
Khaled Hosseini was born on March 4, 1965, in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. In 1976, he moved to Paris with his diplomat father. However he never returned to his hometown because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and the family sought political asylum in America in 1980. In the US, Hosseini majored in medicine and became a physician. In 2001, he started to write a novel while still working as a doctor. He buried himself in his writing at four a.m. and treated patients at his private hospital afterwards. After two years, in 2003, he finally published his first novel 『The Kite Runner』. Following the successful debut of this work, which won him great fame as an author, he became a full-time writer in earnest. From that point on, every one of his novels including 『A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)』, and 『And The Mountains Echoed (2013)』 was a great success, and he became a bona fide writer not only in America but throughout the world.
One of the reasons why his novels have become so popular is that they are deeply moving and evoke outstanding, lingering imagery by real genuinely understanding of each character’s’ ardent passionate story and innate inner world. The manner of developing the story keeps readers amused even while reading a 500-page book, because the characters and sequences are connected and the clues that reveal the secret of the whole story are arranged throughout the novel so that individual stories are intimately connected, perfecting one story. In addition, the writer’s distinct style, characterized by warm and simple writing, is both calm and very charged, making it difficult for the reader to put the book down easily.
However, the most unique feature of his novels is, as mentioned before, that they are all set in Afghanistan. His first and major work, 『The Kite Runner』, is a growth novel about a man who lives in 1960s—2000s Afghanistan. The man tries to ask his friend and servant’s forgiveness for a mistake he made in childhood. The work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, which is awarded to the most influential novels in America; it also became a bestseller in 2005. Although it was severely criticized by some critics for its melodramatic, popular style, it is clearly a significant work that elevates Hosseini to the ranks of the world’s most influential writers, and alerts readers to the crisis faced by the people of Afghanistan. His second novel, 『A Thousand Splendid Suns』 was inspired by his observations of women wearing burkas when he visited Afghanistan in 2003. The novel is about women in Afghanistan who live in a male-dominated society where domestic violence and sexual discrimination are everywhere. The leading characters of the novel are two women who are mutually unintelligible as women and so try to support each other, standing together against their violent husband and dreaming of an independent life. Many readers all around the world felt angered by the reality of women’s rights in Afghanistan, while at the same time feeling hope and delight at the women’s splendid friendship and love. Hosseini’s new novel, 『And The Mountains Echoed』, which is announced after six years, is about the affection between a brother and a sister. He came up with the story when he went back to Afghanistan in 2007 and witnessed the hopeless, harsh life of one family. The story is about a brother and sister separated by poverty. The title of the book is a reference to, “And the Hills Echoed” from the poem, 『Nurse’s Song』. Hosseini thought that these appropriate and strikingly beautiful words would illustrate his idea that, as sounds echo back in the mountains, the consequences of one accident also echo back, affecting someone. In fact, the separation of many decades before has an immense impact on the brother and sister, circling round, through many times and countries. The sadness of the brother who did not keep his sister also tugs at the readers’ heartstrings.
Through his novels, Hosseini tells the reader to pay more attention to Afghanistan. In reality, he works for the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency), conducting relief operations to help the people of Afghanistan. He feels a lot of responsibility when writing stories about his homeland. However, he has already echoed the pain of Afghanistan and the feelings of its people, who make wishes despite their painful lives. Readers from all around the world await the best storyteller’s fourth novel, ready to wet the book with tears of anger, sadness, and delight.
iams3@ajou.ac.kr