It's literally just been formed. It's a 501 C3, non-profit charitable foundation called, unsurprisingly, the Khalled Hosseini Foundation. The aim is to help refugees and aim vulnerable women and children.

I think the changes that have happened, there have been come positive, but by and large, you have to say the changes have been negative. The situation has reached a fairly critical stage in Afghanistan.

Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.

The things that have always drawn me to the craft of writing is character, it's story, it's something that becomes like a pebble in my shoe, a voice that I just can't get rid of, and I've got to see it through.

I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart

I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.