hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?

At least, it is encouraging to me that President [Barack] Obama has put Afghanistan front and center in this broader so-called War on terror, and that he is taking a different approach to Afghanistan.

Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name. Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975 —and all that followed— was already laid in those first words.

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.