By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer on Sep 1, 2013, at 2:27 AM Updated on 9/01/13 at 3:39 AM
Khaled Hosseini, author of "And the Mountains Echoed" and "The Kite Runner," is the subject of the next Tulsa Reads. CHARLES SYKES / Invision / Associated Press file
Khaled Hosseini, whose novel "The Kite Runner" is one of the most successful novels of the past two decades, is the subject of the next Tulsa Reads.
Tulsa Reads is a community-wide literary endeavor that focuses on the body of work of a given writer. It is a joint project of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, Tulsa Town Hall, the Tulsa City-County Library and the Tulsa World.
Hosseini will be in Tulsa Oct. 3-4. He will take part in an evening event Oct. 3 called "Up Close and Personal with Khaled Hosseini," talking about his life and work in response to questions posed to him by several local writers.
The following morning, Oct. 4, he will be the inaugural guest for the 2013-2014 season of Tulsa Town Hall.
Hosseini was born in Kabul. Afghanistan. When he was 9 years old, his father - a diplomat in the Afghan foreign ministry - was given a post in Paris. Four years later, when the former Soviet Union invaded the country, the Hosseini family relocated to California.
Hosseini would earn a medical degree and was a practicing physician when he began working on what would become his first novel, "The Kite Runner."
In a 2007 interview with the Tulsa World, Hosseini said one inspiration for the novel was a kind of survivor's guilt - that through chance he and his family managed to escape the turmoils that would wrack Afghanistan, from the war with the Soviets to the rise of the Taliban.
Hosseini returned to his native land for the first time in 2003.
"I was quite young when we left, so my memories of the city were very positive," Hosseini said at the time. "Kabul was a beautiful place then. Granted, we enjoyed a better life than many people at the time because of my father's career. But I remember it as a wonderful place to be a child."
That visit would inspire his second novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," which examined the plight of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, through the lives of two women brought together into the same house.
"Every incident I write about in this book was based on something I saw or heard from eyewitnesses," Hosseini said in his 2007 interview. "I believe it is impossible to be melodramatic about Afghanistan and what it has gone through over the past few decades. If anything, I have toned things down.
"There were things that I saw in Kabul during my time there that I haven't discussed with anyone. And I never will."
Hosseini earlier this year published his third novel, "And the Mountains Echoed," is his most ambitious and wide-ranging work - a densely woven web of stories that covers more than a half-century of history as it deals with ideas of betrayal and loyalty, family ties and moral conundrums, love and despair.
The complete list of events planned in advance of Hosseini's visit to Tulsa can be found at
tulsaworld.com/tulsareads
James D. Watts Jr. 918-581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: 'Kite Runner' author coming
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