Khaled Hosseini is the author of The Kite Runner, which was a major film and was a Book of the Decade, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian. A Thousand Splendid Suns was the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year in 2008. And the Mountains Echoed was chosen for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club in 2014, and readers voted it as their favourite of all the titles. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. Sea Prayer, his fourth book, was inspired by Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015. Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lives in northern California.

khaledhosseini.com @khaledhosseini

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

'Devastating' Daily Telegraph

'Heartbreaking' The Times

'Unforgettable' Isabel Allende

'Haunting' Independent

Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

A gripping read and a haunting story of love, loss and betrayal. Guaranteed to move even the hardest heart

Shattering . devastating and inspiring

Hosseini is a truly gifted teller of tales . he's not afraid to pull every string in your heart to make it sing

Rings true with tenderness and truth

A devastating, masterful and painfully honest story of a life crippled by an act of childhood and cowardice and cruelty . It speaks the harrowing truth about the power of evil, personal and political, and intoxicates, like a high-flying kite, with the power of hope

Stunning and heartbreaking in its quiet intensity

This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honour, guilt, fear, redemption . It is so powerful that for a long time after, everything I read seemed bland

The novel that made Afghanistan the talking-point of every book group