Khaled Hosseini Talking Books

state visits and Trooping the Colour. Now on BBC News, in this

week's Talking Books Khaled Hosseini talks to Razia Iqbal about how his

relationship with his homeland has changed and when he felt he became a

writer. On Talking Books, I will be talking to Khaled Hosseini. He was

born in Afghanistan. His books have sold millions of copies, including

his best-known book the Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini, welcome to Talking

Books. Afghanistan informs most of your work. Your first few books were

set in Afghanistan. You explored the emotional development of characters

when they leave the country. GEC yourself as an American writer or

innocent Afghan writer? -- or an Afgan writer. I don't know. I just

write books. In Afghanistan, there are novelists, but traditionally it

is not the main avenue of literature. Typically, it is poetry

and people express themselves through poetry. There is not a rich

tradition of novel writing. In that sense, it is American. Kite Runner

It's a coming of age story. That's what makes it more American. But it

does have Afghan themes. It has that in its approach to life. That is an

interesting question though. Let me ask you about the Kite Runner.

Extent 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. You wrote it

when you were practising doctor. -- practising as a doctor. Why did you

write it? I felt that I had to raise it. I was completely immersed in the

world of the two boys. It became a compulsion. I had to see it through.

I had no idea how it was going to go and Howell was going to end. I would

go to bed at night and look forward to getting up in the morning to see

what would happen. I never plan my books. I find it out as I write. I

spent 15 months writing the book in the early morning before work and it

was a special time. You say you didn't plan any of it out. That is

intriguing for people who are interested in the process of writing

and what takes to write a novel. A lot of people aspire to that. Were

you thinking that you wanted to be a storyteller? Did you think you have

the pulse of the storyteller in new? -- in you? I entertained the idea,

but I never thought that I would be a published author. From the time

that I was eight years old, I would write stories and tell them to my

siblings and cousins. Had a compulsion to create. I can't

remember a time when I didn't feel that way. The Kite Runner was a

soaring success. A film was made of the story. It is the story of

siblings and also servants. The two boys come from different places. One

of them is despised by the majority. The story has a sense of betrayal.

One boy feels that he has let the other down. There is a pivotal

moment in the book where there is a brutal and violent attack. It has

that event that cascades throughout the whole story and there is guilt

that the boy feels when he leaves Afghanistan. Can you say something

about why you felt that need to have the character redeem himself?

He goes to America and thinks about what he should have done. He is an

interesting character because he behaved in very narcissistic and

deplorable ways. He was troubled as a boy. He was on unsteady moral

ground. That is the opposite to the other boy, who is rooted in goodness

and integrity. But he has flaws in South,

-- floors and self doubt. Guilt is guilt as a powerful agent. It is a

motor that propels him to overcome his own shortcomings as a person and

overcome his own weaknesses. He goes on a crazy quest and he searches for

a lost relatives and also he is really searching for a better

incarnation of himself. It is out there somewhere in his birthplace.

You think that is a role that section can play for people, that

they can be guided in this way? That was not my intention. One of the

things that I have received letters about from readers all over the

world is that people write to me and say, I used to be kids in school. I

never fully understood the impact of my own behaviour. This book made me

think. I will also receive letters from people telling me that they

were pushed around at school. This book reflected my experience. I was

brutalised and taken advantage of. Children feature heavily in your

book and the relationship between children and parents. Family is a

very fruitful territory for you. I am thinking about your third novel

with And the Mountains Echoed, where two siblings are separated. It

sprawls decades, and the impact of it is felt. It is such an incredible

relationship are we as apparent is simultaneously love and hold our

children to be the dearest things in the world and how we off on other

ones inflicting the most lifelong wounds upon them without meaning to.

That is a conflicting impulse, and that is interesting to me. It makes

for very good dramatic clay to mould something from. Did that become more

acute for you when you became a father? Can you talk more about your

personal story. You left Afghanistan and went to the United States. You

lived in Paris when your father was a diplomat. Can you

talk about that now? I did not have the same relationship with my father

as he did with his father. He was somebody that I looked up to and

loved very dearly. He was also somebody who was widely respected.

He walked into a room, and he wasn't a big man physically, but he

commanded a certain level of respect. There was a gravitas around

him because he was so tat that to his principles and so uncompromising

with them. -- tethered to his principles. He was like that all the

way to his deathbed. His approval was important to me. I wanted him to

be proud of me and pleased with me and he was. Having experienced that

with my father, the thing that he didn't understand was that he had

lost his father when he was two. He understood the part of being the

father, but he didn't understand what it was like to be a son. I feel

like I have experienced both. I can bring the benefit of that experience

into the relationship with my own children and remember what it is

like to be somebodyson. This theme of identity runs through your work

very profoundly and the notion of identity when they were removed from

your roots and taken away from what is familiar with you. The Kite

Runner, Amir feels more That he has a relationship with his father that

he didn't have when he lived in Afghanistan. There is a sense of not

being known in America and there is a sense of not being known in

America and theories and yes in the isolation of that. The same thing

happens with another carrot. She says, you don't know how lucky you

are that you know where you are from. That is the universal impulse.

They are driving past the hospital in this chapter, and one child says

that they know where they were born. The other child, whose past is in

the shadows, so that that is very lucky. Her past is a mystery to her.

Roots are important. You are not just defined by your individual

persona, and who your parrots, but to your grandparent and

great-grandparents are. It is that ancestry and a sense of belonging to

tradition and lineage that is so central to your identity to help

people understand and view you, that to lose that, you know, and to have

that interrupted, it is a really traumatic experience. I know it was

for my parents. They came to the states, and it was the great

equaliser. Reinvention is painful. It is difficult. My parents

reinvented themselves, largely so that we would reap the benefits of

that reinvention. The overarching theme of And the

Mountains Echoed is to do with Afghanistan's relationship with the

wider world. Many of your books are about this country's battered

history over 30, 35 years. Communist revolution, Soviet invasion, Civil

War, ethnic rivalry and atrocity and Islamic tyranny in the form of the

Taliban. I wondered whether you could say a little bit about two

minor characters. The doctor, Idris. And Timor, who came back to lay

claim to be parents house. While a minor character, he embodies

something central to the book, this tension between belonging,

remembering your country, feeling that you want to stay connected

first of all, is EU? Parts of him are very much me. In fact, not the

storyline and what actually happened and what he ends of doing but

certainly his complicated relationship with his own ancestry,

going back home, is essentially what I felt when I went to Afghanistan to

the first time in 2003 after being constantly seven years. I had that

tension that you feel when you had a great sense of homecoming in that I

belong to bear. It was where I was born and I spoke the language. I

would hear snippets of music on the street and remember the song. I

could smell food and they would remember 1975. -- I would. If I

looked at what was going on around me, I would see its sea of people

who had experienced something in which I had no part. My life has

been so drastically different from theirs that for me to see myself as

one of them was a disingenuous at best. It was self-serving and

hypocritical at worst. I kind of navigator that tension and managed

it. -- navigated that tension. I kept myself and remove and

understood that I was not that they are as one of them. The other

character, Idris's cousin, is kind of what I like to call the ugly

Afghan American. He is crass and he is artfully unburdened by this sort

of nuance or subtlety or sensitivity. He goes around and

through the money around and is laughing and joking. He is charming

them and pretending that I am one of you guys. You have almost

single-handedly chronicled the history of Afghanistan in your

novels for an audience of that sees Afghanistan very much through the

PRISM of the news agenda. I wondered if in your mind, you have begun to

enjoy the success of The Kite Runner, that that was what you

wanted to do. My primary interest is wasting in the human story, stories

that I was compelled to tell. I find that interesting and poignant and

moving. Those of the reasons are right. I understand that for many

people, perhaps more so in America than elsewhere, that my books have

been a window into Afghanistan. -- the reasons I write. It may be their

first exposure to the country's histories and traditions and culture

and what has been happening. Did that also happen after a thousand

Splendid Sons, a novel focused on women. There is marry, the

illegitimate child and labour, who was much younger. They are the two

wives of a brutal man, Rashid, and through them one gets the sense of

the casual violence against women in Afghanistan. I wondered if you could

say a little bit about why you wanted to write from the perspective

of women. A thousand Splendid Sons was different in the sense that I

wanted to begin with a big idea. I was almost finished with The Kite

Runner and saw it as a very masculine story. It was a love

tranquil between three men and it was the chip -- a love triangle

between three men and it was the struggle between them. I felt that

there was another great story about what happened to women in

Afghanistan and I felt a great desire to tell that. Not only

because I thought it would be rich dramatically but also because what

happened to women, especially after the withdrawal of the Soviets was so

abominable and atrocious that I felt that it was an important story. Even

before the Taliban, during a time when the Bush had been worth

fighting? Frankly, we could go back 100 years before that. It is not

like the struggle for Afghan women begun with them a head in or the

Taliban, it goes back more than a century. There had been multiple

times in the past 100 years where the attempt to give women freedom

and autonomy have run into backlash and resistance. I thought that that

was an important story. Uncharacteristically for me, I began

with a big idea and it narrowed down into two characters, two women from

different cultural backgrounds. Hence a economic backgrounds. They

became the vehicle for me to tell these big story about women. Here is

what happens two virtually half the population of Afghanistan in the

past 20 years. I have made no secret about how I feel about the

importance of women's role. I have been outspoken about that in

virtually every interviewer had given. The future Afghanistan

depends on women being given their full civil, economic, legal space to

function as legitimate citizens of the country and help shape the

future of their homeland. It has to be one of the cornerstones of this

entire process. If we will once again deprive half the population

and probably the better half of that ability, it is not just wrong from a

moral standpoint but it will do the country. It will really cripple it.

In the measurable ways. It is interesting listening to you speak

about writing about women because women are a big part of your

readership. Women read more fiction than men anyway but a lot of women

read your books... I'm reminded and that at no few know this about the

American comedian Stephen Colbert, he crack a joke in which he publicly

criticise your novels and his front garden was invaded by members of

women's book groups holding flaming torches in one hand and bottles of

white wine in the other. I love the images of that because it says two

things about you. It said that you're a famous enough to have jokes

being made about you and also that your fame is largely driven by

ordinary book loving readers as opposed to a momentum created by

literary professional critics. I suspect, that as a writer, that is

hugely heartening because every writer wishes to be read. I also

wonder whether you would quite like bit more of the other stuff? That is

out of my hands. I have always received, everything considered,

good reviews. I am very pleased with the reception for And the Mountains

Echoed. Those distinctions are meaningful for people in the

industry. I love to get good reviews but they are not for me. If I

receive a bad review, the only thing that concerns me is how legitimate

the review is. Is it the reviewer reviewing the book or is it a

backlash the perception of me or whatever. I can't say it would be

great but I feel like in many ways, I have been... Let me ask you a

question about you as a writer. When you were waking up at 4:00am or

5:00am, you are still practising as a doctor. You are now a writer. You

are not a doctor any more. I would like you to reflect upon that for

me. Do you now feel comfortable saying to people, "I am a writer" ?

I guess so. I had to fill out a little piece of paper right before

landing at Heathrow. My passport number and all that and it's a

profession. I wrote writer because I guess that is what I do. For a long

time, it seemed precious to say that. For a long time, couldn't call

myself a writer because they had never been published and then when I

was first published, it seemed kind of disingenuous because I felt like

nobody would read my books. So, technically, I have a book at the

store but who will read it? When it was widely read, they said that

writers have written more than one book so I kind of postponed it even

more. At some point, I have to say, well, I guess I can, self that so

now I do. -- can call myself that. In my heart, since the time I was a

little boy, it is really what I wanted to do. I never had the

courage to admit it to myself but in my heart of hearts, that was my

dream. Against all odds, somehow, the reality has become to do

something that I have always loved. It was the love of. Khaled Hosseini,

thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you.