Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American novelist, UNHCR goodwill ambassador, and former physician. He was born on March 4, 1965, in Kabul, Afghanistan, to a diplomat father and a mother who taught Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. Hosseini's family moved to Paris in 1976 when his father worked at the Afghan embassy. They were granted political asylum in the United States in 1980 and settled in San Jose, California. He pursued a career in medicine, earning a bachelor's degree in biology from Santa Clara University in 1988 and a medical degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1993. Hosseini completed his residency in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1996 and practiced medicine until 2004 when he turned to writing full-time. His debut novel, "The Kite Runner," published in 2003, was a critical and commercial success. He followed it with "A Thousand Splendid Suns" in 2007, and "And the Mountains Echoed" in 2013. His work often focuses on the experiences of Afghans and has brought awareness to the Afghan refugee crisis. In 2006, Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and he has been working to provide humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through the Khaled Hosseini Foundation. Hosseini currently lives in northern California with his wife, Roya, and their two children, Harris and Farah.