Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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In 1999 Khaled Hosseini, then a doctor in California, heard a news report that the Taliban had banned kite flying in Afghanistan. He had flown kites in Kabul as a boy, and wrote a 25-page short story about two boys and a kite. Two magazines turned it down; in 2001 he found it in his garage and began turning it into a novel, writing in the mornings before work. Born in Kabul in 1965, he had arrived in San Jose at fifteen as a refugee who spoke no English. The Kite Runner came out in 2003 and became the best-selling novel in the United States in 2005. His books have since sold more than forty million copies. This guide covers his four key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 key books · 2003–2018 · Updated 7 Nov: a note in the margin
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Quick answer
Khaled Hosseini has published three novels, The Kite Runner (2003), A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) and And the Mountains Echoed (2013), and one illustrated story, Sea Prayer (2018). Start with The Kite Runner, the book that made his name; each novel stands alone, so the other three can follow in any order.
Where to Start with Khaled Hosseini
If you want his defining book
→ The Kite Runner (2003) — friendship, betrayal and Kabul from the 1970s to the Taliban.
If you want the story of two women
→ A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) — three decades of Afghan history through Mariam and Laila.
If you want many lives across many countries
→ And the Mountains Echoed (2013) — a brother and sister separated in 1952.
If you want something you can read in one sitting
→ Sea Prayer (2018) — a father’s letter to his son before a sea crossing.
4 Khaled Hosseini Books, in Order
The Kite Runner
Marc Forster made the film in 2007.Now a film
Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun man in Kabul, and Hassan, the Hazara son of his father’s servant, grow up flying kites together; after the kite tournament in the winter of 1975 Amir fails to help Hassan when he is assaulted, and then drives him away. Years later, living in California, Amir is called back by his father’s old friend Rahim Khan, who tells him “there is a way to be good again”, and returns to Taliban-ruled Kabul. Published by Riverhead with a first printing of 50,000, it spent 101 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It was filmed in 2007 and adapted for the stage by Matthew Spangler.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a rich man in Herat, is married off as a teenager to Rasheed, a Kabul shoemaker thirty years older. A generation later Laila, whose parents are killed by a rocket, is taken into the same house and also married to Rasheed. Through the Soviet war, the civil war and Taliban rule the two women move from rivalry to a bond that holds against his violence. The title comes from a seventeenth-century poem about Kabul by Saib Tabrizi. It sold more than a million copies in its first week and spent fifteen weeks at number one on the New York Times list.
And the Mountains Echoed
In 1952 a poor farmer from the village of Shadbagh sells his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy childless couple in Kabul, a deal arranged by her uncle Nabi, and her ten-year-old brother Abdullah never gets over it. The novel follows the consequences over decades in nine chapters, each told from a different point of view, moving between Kabul, Paris, the Greek island of Tinos and California. The title comes from William Blake’s “Nurse’s Song”. Reviews were more mixed than for his first two books, but it sold three million copies in five months.
Sea Prayer
A short illustrated book, with paintings by Dan Williams, written as a letter from a Syrian father to his son Marwan on the night before they try to cross the sea to Europe; he remembers their life in Homs before the war. Hosseini wrote it after the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, who drowned in 2015 and whose body was photographed on a Turkish beach. It first appeared in 2017 as an animated virtual-reality film made by The Guardian with UNHCR, and the author’s proceeds from the book go to UNHCR and the Khaled Hosseini Foundation.
In What Order to Read Khaled Hosseini
None of Hosseini’s books continue from one another; each has its own characters, so you can read them in any order. Publication order does show how his scope widened: The Kite Runner follows one narrator, A Thousand Splendid Suns two women, and And the Mountains Echoed a whole family spread across three continents.
Sea Prayer is a short illustrated book and can be read at any point. If you have read The Kite Runner already, A Thousand Splendid Suns is the natural next book, since it covers the same years in Kabul from the side of the women.
A reading path
1. The Kite Runner (2003)
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
3. And the Mountains Echoed (2013)
4. Sea Prayer (2018)
Everything Else Khaled Hosseini Published
Beyond the 4 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Graphic novel
1
1 book · 2011
- 2011The Kite Runner: Graphic Novelan illustrated adaptation of his first novel, first published in Italy
The years · 1965–2022
Quick facts about Khaled Hosseini
- Known for
- Novels about Afghanistan — friendship and guilt in The Kite Runner, two women’s lives in A Thousand Splendid Suns — that brought Afghan stories to tens of millions of readers.
- 1965
- Born in Kabul
- 1980
- Granted asylum in the US, settles in San Jose
- 2003
- The Kite Runner
- 2022
- The Kite Runner opens on Broadway
- Born
- 4 March 1965, Kabul, Afghanistan; his father was a diplomat, his mother taught Persian
- Moved
- Paris in 1976; political asylum in the United States in 1980
- Education
- Santa Clara University (biology, 1988); UC San Diego School of Medicine (MD, 1993)
- Worked
- Internist in California for more than ten years before writing full-time
- Humanitarian work
- UNHCR Goodwill Envoy since 2006; founder of the Khaled Hosseini Foundation
- Languages
- Fluent in Persian and Pashto; writes in English
The red mark is 2003: The Kite Runner, his first novel.
How Khaled Hosseini Writes: Afghan History, Family Scale
Hosseini came to fiction from medicine. The Kite Runner began as a short story he wrote after the 1999 news of the Taliban kite ban, and he expanded it into a novel in the mornings before his shifts as an internist. He drew on his own childhood: as a boy in Kabul he was friends with a Hazara man who worked for his family, who taught him to fly kites and whom he taught to read. He has said he only recognised afterwards that Hassan came from that friendship.
He tells Afghanistan’s recent history — the end of the monarchy, the Soviet invasion, the civil war, the Taliban — through families rather than events. Each book is built on a damaged bond: Amir and Hassan, Mariam and Laila with Rasheed, Abdullah and Pari. His form has widened with each novel, from Amir’s first-person confession to the alternating stories of two women, and then to nine chapters with nine different narrators.
Displacement runs through all of it. His family could not return to Afghanistan after 1978 and arrived in California as refugees, and exile, return and the people left behind recur in every book, most directly in Sea Prayer, written for UNHCR, the refugee agency he has worked with since 2006. For writers with the same reach, see Authors like Khaled Hosseini.
Watch
Khaled Hosseini on why he writes about pain
On Talk to Al Jazeera in July 2014, Hosseini explains why pain and loss sit at the heart of his fiction.
Frequently asked questions about Khaled Hosseini’s books
How many books has Khaled Hosseini written?
Four: three novels, The Kite Runner (2003), A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) and And the Mountains Echoed (2013), and the illustrated story Sea Prayer (2018). A graphic-novel version of The Kite Runner appeared in 2011.
What are Khaled Hosseini’s books in order?
The Kite Runner (2003), A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), And the Mountains Echoed (2013) and Sea Prayer (2018).
Where should I start with Khaled Hosseini?
With The Kite Runner (2003), his first and best-known novel. If you have already read it, go on to A Thousand Splendid Suns, which covers the same decades in Kabul through two women.
What is Khaled Hosseini’s most famous book?
The Kite Runner. It was the best-selling novel in the United States in 2005, spent 101 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has been adapted for film and the stage. A Thousand Splendid Suns spent longer at number one: fifteen weeks.
Do you need to read Khaled Hosseini’s books in order?
No. None of them is a sequel, and each has its own characters. Reading in publication order does show how his canvas widened from one narrator in The Kite Runner to nine in And the Mountains Echoed.
Is The Kite Runner a true story?
No, it is a novel, but Hosseini drew on his childhood in Kabul in the 1970s, when he flew kites with cousins and friends. He was close to a Hazara man who worked for his family and taught him to fly kites, and he has said he realised only after finishing the book that Hassan came from that friendship.
Have Khaled Hosseini’s books been adapted?
Yes. The Kite Runner was filmed in 2007 by Marc Forster, from a screenplay by David Benioff, and Matthew Spangler’s stage version ran in the West End in 2016–17 and on Broadway in 2022. A Thousand Splendid Suns became a stage play in 2017 and an opera by Sheila Silver at Seattle Opera in 2023; a film version, planned since 2007, has not been made.
Why is The Kite Runner banned or challenged?
It contains the sexual assault of a child, and challengers have cited offensive language, sexual content and unsuitability for the age group. It was on the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books of 2008 and among the most banned books of 2021–22, and by 2024 it had been removed from school libraries in at least nine US states. The 2007 film was also controversial: after threats against the child actors over the assault scene, Paramount relocated three of them to the United Arab Emirates, and Afghanistan banned the film. Some Afghan readers have also criticised the novel’s portrayal of relations between Pashtuns and Hazaras.
Was Khaled Hosseini a doctor?
Yes. He qualified at the UC San Diego School of Medicine in 1993, completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles in 1997, and practised internal medicine in California for more than ten years before the success of The Kite Runner let him write full-time.
Is Khaled Hosseini still alive?
Yes. He was born on 4 March 1965 in Kabul and lives in California with his family. His most recent book is Sea Prayer (2018).
Footnotes
- Khaled Hosseini — Wikipedia
- The Kite Runner — Wikipedia
- A Thousand Splendid Suns — Wikipedia
- Biography — Khaled Hosseini (official site)
- Khaled Hosseini says a succinct Sea Prayer for a refugee’s journey — NPR, 2018
- 10 fascinating facts about The Kite Runner — Mental Floss
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
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“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.”
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2003), the first line
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