Author Provides 'Insider's View' of Afghanistan

With his first book, "The Kite Runner," and now his second, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Khaled Hosseini has given his readers vivid portraits of the country where he was born: Afghanistan.

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"The Kite Runner" told the gripping tale of two boys growing up in Kabul in the peaceful 1970s and the divergent paths their lives took when war came to their country. It created a publishing sensation, captivating book clubs and topping bestseller lists.

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After more than two years, it still remains on The New York Times bestseller list, currently settled in at No. 8. "The Kite Runner is an incredibly unlikely success story," said Hosseini. "If there was a formula of how to write a book that was sure to fail, 'The Kite Runner' has it.

"You take a dark, borderline unlikable central character. You put him in a place that a lot of people know nothing about and few people care about and then you make it a very dark story where people's favorite characters die in gruesome ways and you say here is a book for your leisurely reading on the beach."

'Hope' and Afghan Women

Where "The Kite Runner" was the story of boys who grow into men, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is its counterpoint. Seen through the intertwined lives of two Afghan women across the recent war-ridden history of Afghanistan, the novel "is about the daily domestic struggles of these women in the setting of a country that is unraveling out of control," said Hosseini.

And the struggles are many: forced marriage, child marriage, the beating of women, the stigma of illegitimacy. "I think it reflects the reality for a lot of Afghan women, especially in the tribal areas," said Hosseini. "In those regions a Taliban-style repression of women has been the way of life for centuries, long before the birth of the Taliban."

"In those regions women have always been forced into marriage. They hardly ever go to school beyond the age of 12. They rarely are part of public life. So what we are familiar with, the Taliban, their treatment of women has been the way of life in certain regions of Afghanistan forever," Hosseini continued.