JOIN USHis novels have introduced the beauty of the war-torn lands of Afghanistan to the world. Chethana Dinesh talks to Khaled Hosseini, whose sensitive prose has moved many to tears.
Afghan-born American writer Khaled Hosseini, 49, is a marvelous weaver of tales that are at once heart-tugging and melancholic. His novels, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed, set in his native Afghanistan, have become international bestsellers.
Son of a diplomat father and teacher mother, Hosseini left Afghanistan when he was just 11 years old. A doctor by training, he never imagined being a writer, till his debut, The Kite Runner (2003), became a huge success. He and his wife Roya, and their two children, make their home in Northern California. Excerpts from an interview:
When were you bitten by the writing bug?
As a child, I loved to read and my parents encouraged my interest in literature. I was probably eight or nine years old when I began writing. One of the first short stories I wrote, probably around the age of 10 or so, I included in The Kite Runner, as the story that the central character, Amir, reads to his servant Hassan. So, as far as the bug, I was bitten early and hard.
Writing and medicine — two very different fields. How did it happen?
Writing was always my private passion. But for the longest time, I never thought of writing as a viable career choice. It seemed outlandish, the odds stacked against you. Plus, I doubted my own talents. Medicine, on the other hand, you cannot find a more sensible choice of work.
Though it was not a deep calling for me, I enjoyed practising medicine and was always honoured that patients put their trust in me to take care of them and their loved ones. But, as I said, writing had always been my passion, since childhood, much like Amir in The Kite Runner. So, when the opportunity rose for me to switch careers, it really was not much of choice. I have not looked back since my last day of work in medicine in 2004.
Leaving one’s home behind must have been pretty painful, but you have had the courage to put it down in words in your stories. How do you feel about that?
I am not sure if it was really all that courageous a decision at the end of the day. The experience of exile was one that I knew firsthand, and I felt somewhat qualified to write about it in my books, especially The Kite Runner. The passages that resonate most personally with me in that book are the ones in the United States with Amir and Baba trying to build a new life. I came to the US as an immigrant, and I recall vividly my first few years in California, the brief time we spent on welfare, and the difficult task of assimilating into a new culture. My father and I did work for a while at a flea market where we met many Afghans, some of whom I am related to. Writing about that experience did help me relive it in a way, and to reflect anew on the challenges we faced as a family, and to appreciate, again, my parents’ hard work, and yes, courage.
Though you no longer live in Afghanistan, the feel of the place in your books seems real. How do you manage it?
I have vivid memories of pre-Soviet era Afghanistan that I have relied on for both The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed. I recall that period and the city well and I have been able to mostly tap into my own memories — supplemented by some research, of course, to recreate the atmosphere of the country in that era. Many of the more present-time passages in this new book are inspired in part by things I have experienced in the course of my travels there with the UN in the last decade.
And The Mountains Echoed is quite different from your earlier two books. It doesn’t directly deal with the Taliban. Was it a conscious decision to move away from the political turmoil in the country? Why did you choose the unconventional structure wherein each of the nine chapters is being told from the perspective of a different character?
Partly it was a conscious decision not to let the book become too political, and wade into issues I felt I had already addressed in my previous two books. The book partly ended up the way it is now because stories always in the end dictate their own nature and their own course. And this set of characters turned out to be struggling with personal, intimate issues — often about family and personal identity — that did not necessarily play out on a big geo-political stage.
As for the structure, I always intended with this book to write something with both the heft and the arc of a novel. What I discovered, as I wrote, was that a whole host of characters were taking shape in my mind and crying out for their stories to be told, a feat that proved impossible with a traditional linear structure. The end result is that each chapter stands more or less on its own, but each also illuminates part of a much bigger story. Each chapter provides answers to questions raised earlier in the book, each reveals epiphanies both minor and major. My hope was that each character is better understood, better appreciated if you had read the previous chapters. To what extent I succeeded is of course, up to the readers.
What is the inspiration behind the themes you choose for your books?
I really never choose themes for my books, per se. I start with a character, a situation, an image, a line of dialogue, something to work with and then proceed from there. My books start really small and then snowball. It is really halfway or even much farther along the path, during the writing of a first draft, that I begin to recognise what the themes are. They emerge naturally, more or less on their own, during the writing; I don’t choose them ahead of time. It is after I recognise the themes that I can then go back, on rewrites, and highlight them.
How do you feel about the nomination for the prestigious DSC prize?
I am honoured, of course. It is a privilege to write for a living, and to be read. To be recognised for it is really extraordinary, especially alongside other such distinguished colleagues. I am deeply thankful.
Which writer’s work has made a deep impact on your writing? Who do you look up to?
I always struggle with this question, because I am not consciously aware of any influence or impact by other writers, though I am sure that I have been affected as a writer by what I have read.
So the best I can do is offer you a list of books that I have read, some re-read, and really enjoyed over the years: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Watchmen by Alan Moore, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, Animal Farm by George Orwell, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, The Good Soldiers by David Finkel, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Disgrace by J M Coetzee, classical Persian poetry, and more...