Khaled Hosseini was born on March 4, 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan. During his time in Afghanistan, he lived in the Wazir Akbar Khan district which was one of the wealthier neighborhoods in the area (Academy). His mother was a high school teacher and his father was a foreign ministry diplomat. In 1976, his father’s work relocated his family to Paris (Hosseini). While living in Paris, Khaled Hosseini learned French as his second language (Academy). By 1980, Hosseini’s family was ready to return to Afghanistan, but Soviet forces had overthrown the government in a bloody coup. The Hosseini family was granted political asylum in the US and Khaled was thrown into the American high school experience. He was able to become fluent in English in a surprisingly
Amin Ahmad was born in Calcutta, India. He now lives in Washington D.C. as a published author and has had some of his work appear in such prestigious journals as The Harvard Review (1). Knowing the intelligence and high credibility of the author makes his argument more substantial. Over the years he has built himself up in spite of being an immigrant. Ahmad is no longer looked down upon, because he has worked hard for his position in society.
Hosseini's novel is quite intriguing as he profoundly explains the life of both Mariam and Laila with depth. Throughout the novel he is able to characterize the life a woman had in Afghanistan.This is exemplified through the the structure Hosseini uses, he separates the lives of Mariam and Laila into many distinct parts, the two individual stories of the protagonists are within parts one and two. As a result, parts three and four reside to the shared experiences of them both. By doing this he is able compare and contrast the lives of Mariam and Laila, which is an exceptional way of doing it. Throughout the novel, Hosseini is able to depict the themes of oppression to women, affects of love, and impacts on war. One of the themes is war in which
Khaled Hosseini incorporates his personal background into the characters and events in his books. In the two novels that he wrote, the main location was in Kabul Afghanistan which is also the same place where he was born in the year of 1965 ("Biography"). Hosseini said that Kabul, Afghanistan seems to be “sort of a cultural island” to him, “since all the Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by...
The settings for the two novels differ drastically in both time and location. Hinton's story takes place in Oklahoma. “He was staring at my head as he circled me. 'I wouldn't have believed it. I thought all the wild Indians in Oklahoma had been tamed (Hinton 106).” Hosseini, however, places his book in mainly Afghanistan. Hinton portrayed her novel in the 1960s while Hosseini uses a broad spectrum from 1975 to the 21st century. “I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came and changed everything (Hosseini 2).” Although the different settings do change what is going on at the time of the book, it does not chan...
His family upbringing and financial status helped shape the early years of Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was born on March 10, 1957 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He was the 17th son of Mohammed bin Laden out of about 50 children (Coll 84). Mohammed bin Laden was a wealthy man who owned a construction company known as bin Laden Construction Company. Not only did he obtain his wealth from this, but also from his massive support of the Saudi Government. In 1967, when Osama was 13, his father passed away in a plane crash. When this occurred, Osama wanted to take charge and start making a life of his own (Coll 85). Growing up, Osama enjoyed being on his own because he accepted the fact that he was not very close with his family. In times of need, bin Laden turned to Allah for support when his family gave him none (Anonymous 82). Between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Osama attended Jedda’s King Abdulaziz University which foc...
Islam has influenced many cultures around the world. For centuries, Islam has had an immense influence on the Afghan culture. According to this religion, women have no rights. The men took advantage of this system by translating only what they wanted from the Koran; to enslave the women in our culture for their own desires. From the beginning, the women on no account had any civil rights or have power over their own lives, and most were uneducated and had accepted what their teachers taught in schools and mosques. My family moved to the US when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. I thank god to be one of the lucky women who did not have to live in Afghanistan and for giving me a better place to live in America. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the majority of the Afghan women. Under the cruel Taliban government the women were banned to work, and were not allowed outside their homes without being escorted by a man. The film Osama, inspired by a true story, is about Osama, a young girl who did lived in Kabul while the Taliban regime. Through Osama's story, I had a chance to see what it was like to live in Afghanistan as a woman. This is a story of a girl whose faith was in the hands of many different people: her family, the Taliban soldiers, and the city judge. Osama and I have different lives on different continents; however, we both could have had more rights and better life if we were born men.
Overall, Khaled Hosseini wrote a story, based on experiences from his own life and the history of Afghanistan from the turn of the 20th century until present day. He added the universal human theme of being good again, allowing this book and these characters to appeal to readers everywhere. He also crafted one of the most successful and popular novels in the Afghan American genre. Looking at the The Kite Runner from the outside in, or from the perspective of the author’s life and Afghanistan’s past, it is easy to see that Hosseini manages to open the eyes of the Western reader. A person on this side of the International Date Line is forced to reconsider their general perspective and beliefs about Muslims and Afghanistan after picking up The Kite Runner.
The landmark ruling in the case of an Afghan bomb maker is set to make it harder for him to bring a successful legal claim against the Ministry of Defence.
...izens of Kabul. As a result, Hassan’s childhood is much more difficult than Amir’s, allowing him to become stronger, more resilient, and less ignorant. Nonetheless, the two boys grow up together in Afghanistan during a time when it is considered to be a relatively peaceful country. In the late seventies however, this peace is destroyed as a result of the Russian invasion in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the environments from which Amir and Hassan each came from largely influences the people they become in the transitional phase of their lives from boyhood to young adulthood.
One’s upbringing and status ultimately affects their behavior and authority in society. The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, shows the difference in power between the Hazaras, who have been persecuted throughout Afghani history, and the Pashtuns, who hold superior status. The novel is set against the backdrop of a class-based society structure in Afghanistan. The hierarchical society determines occupation, status, and power in the social structure, and defines the social interaction amongst members of different classes. Using the Marxist lens to analyze this novel reveals the impact of different socioeconomic classes and offers a more comprehensive view of what life was like during a time of great political anarchy in Afghanistan. By
The Kite Runner is the first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. The novel is about a Pashtun fellow, Amir, who realizes his childhood mistakes and begins a journey to emend them. Hosseini commenced inditing the novel in 2001 while practicing medicine (source). Therefore, his cognizance regarding health care is limpidly reflected in the novel by his writing style, and the conflicts in the lives of characters. For instance, Ali, who is a servant in Amir’s house and his father’s childhood friend, suffers from congenital paralysis of lower facial muscles and polio. Author’s description of his leg as “twisted, atrophied …. sallow skin over bone with little in between except a paper- thin layer of muscle“ shows his deep knowledge about diseases and symptoms (10). Moreover, these conflicts not only have noticeable impact in the development of the plot but also reflect on the miserable condition of healthcare in Afghanistan. Amir’s mother die during childbirth reveals the pathetic status of neonatal care in Afghanistan. Amir witness several health related issues and consequences in the lives of other characters throughout the story. Thus, the author utilizes him to highlight important themes relative to health care in Afghanistan like maternal death, child mortality, disability, addiction due to excessive drug use and deformities. In essence, the novel prompts certain questions like “What factors are downsizing the population of afghanistan? What is the overall condition of hospitals and healthcare professionals? Why do women face health care crisis? What home remedies are available as a substitute for poor health care conditions and are they truly helping people to recover?” Thus, this research...
Ayatollah Khomeini’s foundation to become the central figure and religious leader of the Iranian Revolution began in his childhood. He was born into a fairly wealthy Shi’ite Muslim family on September 24, 1902. His true name was Ruhollah Musavi, but he adopted the name of Khomeini after his place of birth. He never really knew his father because his father was murdered in 1903. When Khomeini was four years old, he began attending a local religious school and continued to attend it until he was sixteen years old. He then furthered his education at a theological college. He studied with Yazdi Ha’iri, a prominent Islamic scholar at the time. After he completed his college education, he became an Islamic teacher at Ha’iri’s school. After Ha’iri died, Ayatollah Boroujerdi took his place as the most important religious figure, and Khomeini became a follower. Khomeini preached against the continuing stray from traditional Islam in Iran and gained a group of followers. He gained the title of ayatollah, meaning a ‘sign of God,’ in the 1950s.
In 1954, the Sheik first started giving informal weekly lessons. So, his outspoken views and popularity concerned Syria and he was put under surveillance though he was not politically involved. Later, after his books were published in print, he was invited to teach Hadith by the vice president of the time, Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz of the Islamic University of Madinah. After his arrival, his views on the law system angered people and because they did not match that of the Hanbali School of Law, an elite group from Saudi Arabia named Wahhabi was angered. After he published a book highlighting that it is not mandatory to wear the veil, Niqab, he created an uproar in the country as well as the means for his opponents to end his time at the University without another year after. In 1963, he left to Saudi Arabia, leaving his watch shop to one of his brothers and returning to the library once
Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani writer and self-confessed “transcontinental mongrel”. Born in 1971 in Lahore, Hamid shifted to the United States at the age of eighteen. He attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School and worked briefly as a management consultant in New York. After living in London for a few tears, he moved back to Pakistan and currently lives in Lahore with his wife and daughter.
The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, depicts the life of Amir, a male from Afghanistan, and his maturation through the social and political turmoil that emerged in Afganistan. Although the story is fictitious, the plot and storyline involves political, social, and cultural problems in Afghanistan. The book also provides a small window of contrast to the contemporary problems of terrorism, cultural battles and coup d'etat in the middle east.