Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan in 1965, and came to the US with his family when he was 15 years old, today he is a US citizen, a doctor, and an author who has sold over 38 million books.
It's striking just how vividly he can portray events and daily life in Afghanistan, and I was surprised at how much I didn't know about the country. As it turns out, Afghanistan was quite peaceful in the days of it's monarchy, before a coup, and then the Soviet invasion brought chaos and war.
The author gives a very balanced view, he doesn't try to hide from the negative aspects of Afghanistan's recent history, like forced marriages, war, massacres, the Taliban's iron fisted (and barbaric) time in power, but he also shows the positives, and the good within people. One such incident is when the main character and narrator in The Kite Runner, Amir is facing the death of his father, and the entire Afghan Pahstun community in his new hometown in Southern California (Amir and his father had fled shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1979), came together to support him, and help him in any way that they could.
