Hosseini was criticized by some Afghans for how he portrayed Afghanistan. “And then when I was done I said, ‘Oh my God, of course that's where this character comes from!’-which was startling to me, the powers of the subconscious.” 5. Readers of The Kite Runner might notice some similarities between that man and Hassan-also a servant belonging to the Hazara people, a large but persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan-but according to Hosseini, that wasn’t on purpose: “The really striking thing was that I finished the entire novel without once consciously thinking of him,” he told Salon. When Hosseini was a child growing up in Afghanistan, he struck up a friendship with a Hazara man who worked for his family the man taught Hosseini how to fly kites, and Hosseini helped teach him how to read. The character of Hassan was (subconsciously) based on a real person. People read the books and tell their friends to read the book because they connect with something in the story.” 4. Those geopolitical events helped the novel get published, but Hosseini didn’t necessarily credit them for his novel’s success: “Being published and having people still embracing the book four years later are two very different things. But here’s a story about family life, about customs, about the drama within this household, a window into a different side of Afghanistan.” “Usually stories about Afghanistan fall into ‘Taliban and war on terror’ or ‘narcotics’-the same old things. I was reluctant at first, but eventually I came around to her way of looking at it, which was that this story could show a completely different side of Afghanistan,” he said. Then, after 9/11, “my wife really started talking to me about submitting a novel. In an interview with Salon, Hosseini said that he was challenging himself to write a novel with The Kite Runner. September 11th and the war in Afghanistan piqued interest in the novel. “Qualities you need to be a novelist: Ditto.” 3. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight,” he told The New York Times. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. “Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Hosseini hasn’t practiced medicine since 2004, but there are elements of his life as a doctor that still come in handy as a writer. That hard work paid off: The Kite Runner was a huge success, paving the way for more novels. Later, he wrote The Kite Runner in the mornings before going to work as an internist at a hospital in Los Angeles. So he eventually chose a more “serious” profession, becoming a doctor. He and his family settled in California, and though Hosseini wanted to be a writer, “it seemed outlandish that I would make a living writing stories in a language I didn’t speak,” he told The Atlantic. He was just 15 years old and only knew a few words of English. Hosseini came to the United States as a refugee in 1980 after a communist coup in his home country of Afghanistan. Hosseini wrote the novel in the mornings before going to work. In 2001, he found the short story in his garage and, at the urging of a friend, decided to turn it into a novel. He wrote a 25-page short story-which “became this kind of a much darker, more involved tale than I had anticipated”-and submitted it to The New Yorker and Esquire, both of which rejected it. The report “kind of struck a personal chord for me, because as a boy I grew up in Kabul with all my cousins and friends flying kites,” he told RadioFreeEurope. In 1999, Hosseini was watching the news when he saw a story about the Taliban banning kite flying in Afghanistan. The Kite Runner started as a short story inspired by news reports. Here’s what you should know about Khaled Hosseni’s debut novel-which was also the first novel written in English by an Afghan author. It was also challenged after its release for offensive language and scenes depicting sexual abuse. The book, published in 2003, became a New York Times best-seller it has since been published in 40 languages and sold over 8 million copies. The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan against a backdrop of the country’s tumultuous history-from the fall of the monarchy to the rise of the Taliban.
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