THE KITE RUNNER Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 1

THE KITE RUNNER
Years later, the phone call reminds the adult Amir that he cannot outrun his past. He must
return to the land of his childhood to try to make amends for what he did so many years
ago. But time and politics have drastically changed the Afghanistan of his childhood into a
country he barely recognizes. He finds himself up against the same prejudice and evil from
which he ran the first time. Will Amir be able to atone for his past The Kite Runner is a
beautiful and moving story of the love between friends that reminds us that it’s never to late
to try to do the right thing.
HOSSEINI
KHALED HOSSEINI
Khaled Hosseini was born on March 4, 1965
in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as the
oldest of five children. His father worked for
the Afghan Foreign Ministry as a diplomat, and
his mother was a high school teacher of Farsi
and history. When he was five years old, his
family moved from Kabul to Tehran, Iran. They
returned to Kabul in the historic year of 1973,
when Afghanistan became a republic. In 1976,
his family followed his father to Paris. After
the PDPA (the People’s Democratic Party of
Afghanistan) seized control of the government
in 1978 and the Soviets occupied Afghanistan
shortly thereafter, the Hosseini family decided
to seek political asylum in the United States
instead of returning to Kabul. They moved to San
Jose, California, where Hosseini graduated from
Independence High School. He attended Santa
Clara University and earned a degree in biology.
The Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini
After college, Hosseini decided to become a physician. He attended the University of
California-San Diego’s School of Medicine, where he completed his M.D. in 1993. He
served his medical residency at the well-respected Cedars-Sinai hospital of Los Angeles
and became an internist. Hosseini started writing The Kite Runner in 2001 while he was a
practicing physician. Hosseini published The Kite Runner in 2003 to critical acclaim. Parts
of the novel are based on Hosseini’s childhood in the Kabul neighborhood of Wazir Akbar
Khan. While some events in the story echo those in this life, the novel is fictional. By May
2007, it had been published in thirty-eight countries but not Afghanistan.
Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 6