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>> unlike the first three novels, this is less centric and more global in its effectiveness. i am wondering how the complex history of afghanistan is. how simple is it to your writing? >> it has always been a tumultuous subject. i would say it is not quite as prominently right now. part of that is because i wrote this novel and i saw the

characters and their struggles playing out on a more personal intimate level. this is seriously impacted by the fighting in afghanistan. i felt like i dealt with those things quite a bit during the first two books. you know, characters and their relationships between family members, the complicated feelings about wealth and so on sore forward.

>> i read that you said that this is a love story. clearly the relationship between the siblings is rooted in this fierce love. but there is so much heartbreak and sacrifice and a trail. talk about the family and the sibling relationships are such a parallel. there is also the relationship of the father and the child and the sacrifices. >> the novel is sort of shaped like a tree. part of the novel is like this love story.

we meet them first in the early 1950s. they are on their way to cabo with her father. they are kind of tracking across the desert. and it splits the relationship between the brother and his little sister, and it's a separation that devastates both in so many unique ways. from there on, the story just spreads out. it spreads to other places with other characters, there is one actor in the novel that had echoed. but at the core, it is a family story and a love story, just like you said. it is about love between brothers and sisters and fathers

and daughters. it is between cousins. i am interested in manifestations of love that are kind of different than the romantic notion of love, man meets woman. i'm disinclined to write about that is a dramatic motive. i'm interested in a love that blossoms in places that you were not expected between two people who have and likely deep meaningful relationship under difficult circumstances. first the relationship between this transistors and what is it about the role of caregiver in? >> again, it is a manifestation of love. something that you don't

immediately think about anything about love. you think about meeting somebody and falling in love. but it turns out that love is a lot of work and it is tiring. it tests your patience. and it is complicated. last year and a half in two years of my father's life were very difficult. as he gradually lost his way, he became independent. i saw my mother take care of him and she dedicated her life to caring and feeding him. doing all of those things. i saw it in this beautiful rocksolid expression of love that i have ever seen. that kind of expression of love, it really just kind of became so appealing. it is enduring, it is meaningful. it is deep.

and i find it very touching. >> you said that you were inspired by what the nurses saw and the idea of the children's voices. what about that home captured your imagination? >> i had written a whole novel. i was waiting for a title that never came. and i e-mailed my editor and said that i still don't have a title, what am i going to do. so i started researching columns about children. because this book, in some ways really is about children. and i found this lovely poem by william blake. the last lyric was all the hills echoed. and that is kind of how i came up with the title.

he chants the last line aldworth over and over. it was such an evocative phrase. i thought i would play with the title and i talked to my editor. we change the hills to mountains for all these reasons come because the mountains are so recurring in this novel. as i just mentioned earlier, there is a central event that happens early in the book that ripples out and echoes across time and space and has a deep impact on a number of characters. each of whom are given a chance to voice their perspective. the novel is like a series of vignettes that create collectively one big picture.

>> there is a scene involving the family. the complexity of the moral choices made by those who come to afghanistan, those who make promises when the doctor returns to california, can you explain a little bit? >> there is a chapter in the book those who returned to afghanistan after the fall of the taliban. they have a very difficult experience there. when he arrives there, he feels out of place. he has not shared in that way.

he's not sure how to connect with people. the people. he is not sure how to interact. he is not sure what is the proper way to engage with the locals and his own people. so he feels a little bit like a fish out of water. then he meets this young girl who has been brutally, brutally injured. he meets her in a hospital. and something about this little girl awakens something in him. then lays dormant as an impulse in him and he becomes very attached and he decides that he is going to help her. of course then, he returns home and he learns a kind of a difficult lesson about the limits of his own power. about how complicated generosity really is.

about charity. and he becomes sort of amorality to be told. it is something that i have thought about a lot when i go to afghanistan. when i first went there, my impulse is to help everyone. i was very careful not to promise anything to anyone. i wanted to help everybody. and when i came back home, i realized that that is just human impulse and emotion speaking. do you actually want to help people read that you have to be organized and it takes time and patience and perseverance and so on and so forth. that is sort of some of the story. >> you have the khaled hosseini

foundation, you have worked as a u.s. envoy. and there is this impulse to try to find the structure for the need to help. >> absolutely. i have made it abundantly clear that one of the reasons i started this foundation was i had overwhelming guilt when i went to afghanistan. when i went there and i saw the insides. when i went there, i just felt that, you know, i felt very guilty because my life is so charmed. this is before the publication of my book and so forth. i lead a life of complete privilege. and i saw these people on the street. i decided the only thing separating me between them is genetics.

but really, what it boils down to is this. deep inside, there is this annoying feeling of unearned privilege. so that creates a feeling of survivor's guilt. which i know that others feel as well. my foundation is part of these reasons. i wanted to turn something that was a negative emotion into something that was positive and productive as a vehicle to do something that hopefully was enduring and we can make a difference in the lives of people who i have written about in my books. that is the point. to help people. the elderly, the sick, vulnerable people. >> having just recently been there with secretary john kerry and the president gave a speech, which is largely motivated by the necessity to reframe our

relationship with afghanistan, what is your perspective going forward? do you see this landmark election is conceivably being like the first truly free election and the handing out of power and a successful withdrawal? can afghanistan stand on its own >> i think that is a very big question. i don't think anyone knows the answer to that. i don't think the afghan people now. i would describe the upcoming few years as a time of uncertainty in the minds of many afghans, certainly those that we've spoken to. there are some that are convinced. i happen to be not among them. there is a legitimate argument that some make. doomsday scenario being not over

the takeover by the taliban and by what happened before that, there are people who believe that all-out militia warfare will happen. i happen to think it won't, hopefully. the parties that were involved hopefully have learned important lessons about the benefits of peace and peaceful country. certainly the bogeyman that every afghan is terrified of is a return to the chaos and the rampant violence and the impunity of the 1990s. >> one of my recurring themes of work is the women in afghanistan their efforts in self-determination and education. the things that americans have done. the things that afghans have done for themselves. business leaders who are extraordinary.

they are worried about the fragility about the legal rights they have one. >> they are. >> as far as these interventions go. >> things have improved for some women. it could be 1950. and things haven't changed all that much. but i think that things have improved in some ways. there have been significant advances in the field of women's rights. there is a female provincial governor in afghanistan, that would've been unthinkable before september 11. but like you, as women business leaders in afghanistan, they do worry. i think that the role of women

in afghan society has to be preserved. women's rights has to be one of the cornerstones of national rebuilding. if afghanistan has any chance of being a prosperous and peaceful nation in the future. a way to lift yourself out of poverty. so i am hoping that it is not a bargaining chip at the negotiating table when this happened. >> i think people would want to know how you go about your writing. other creative process works. >> it is very disorganized. i know writers who outlined their entire novels. every chapter is accounted for and then they spent three months

writing their book. in some ways i ended up, but it doesn't work for me. i just start writing. this novel, my latest book began life a very simple but clear and vividly deliberate picture, which there was a guy walking across a desert and was pulling one of those radio flyer wagons. there was a cute little girl in a wagon and about 10 steps behind them was a boy that is following him. i had no idea who these people were, where they were going. but this image has completely possessed me and i became absolutely convinced that there was something in this picture that was very dramatic and compelling and i have to figure out what it is. they just kept snowballing and snowballing to the point where this book became, in many ways, the most sweeping book with the largest cast of characters. i also think that more ambitious

and in an innocent unsystematic way. it just kind of snowballed. i have no idea where the book was going. so i end up writing and having of revelations and epiphanies and little southern bits of insight about my characters with each subsequent drafts. i keep revolting and rewriting it until it is the something that feels real and truthful to me. the dramatic example is the kite runner. i wrote an entire draft and i had no idea that the boys were related. i wrote a whole draft and i thought of it and it changed the whole tenor of the book. so became suddenly much more powerful as a book. i think. >> it's not an accident that one of your characters is a poet.

>> that's right. >> poetry infuses this book. >> that is right. because it is in the afghan soul. if you go to afghanistan and you talk to people, there is a poetry in the way they express themselves read even in remote villages, people know poetry. you know, when we were in school, we were obligated to memorize poetry and to be able to recite it from memory. even in the way people express themselves, this is a kind of slightly expressive flavor to the way people speak and i think that the most vivid example is when i went to the palace in cabo, where this magnificent massive palace gardens that was

gorgeous existed. and it became sort of the battlegrounds for all the militia fighting of the 1990s. it ended up being the perfect metaphor for what has happened in afghanistan. wonder to destitution and nowadays there's ruin with massive holes and snakes and scorpions everywhere. so i visited the palace and i noticed that it was littered with graffiti everywhere. so much of it was poetry. you know? it was just in real. i was very touched by that. a lot of it was poetry. there is a character in this book was agreed doctor and he is working for an ngo in one of the afghans says, why do you stay here, why do you like this place and what you like about our people.

and he said even the graffiti artists i like this. that is why when i hear. >> what do you hope that people take away from this experience? the experience of reading this book aside from the fact that it's so heartbreaking and challenging and sweeping and such an emotional grab. >> there is a real answer to that question. and there is the fake noble answer to that question. >> try the real one. >> okay. >> the real answer is i want people to be deeply moved. i want people to read this book and recognize the feeling of being human on this planet. i want people to read something and say, you know, i know that expanse, i have had that. i know what he's talking about.

and to be able to connect on a human level with writing. but the fake answer would be i would want people to understand this better. i happen to hope that they do. but it's not the reason why sit down and write. i fully understand that fiction often serves a purpose and touches and reaches people in ways that the writer never really intended. so my books have served as a kind of window into afghan history and culture in the afghan way of life. it has given people, i think, a more human dimension of this country that is so much on the news, often for the same kinds of things over and over. >> often in the news for the worst possible reasons. war weary america and not understanding why we are there.

what you have managed to do is create the universality of human experience. >> i think you were saying that. it is the first step towards empathy. not that i'm trying to generate it. but i think that is what literature kind of inherently does. i always use the example of what is the what to make me feel for the first time what it must've been like to be a refugee. you know, trekking across the desert to make it into kenya, being attacked by wild animals and militias along the way. i felt a great sense of empathy because of this book and this novel and that is what literature has been about and that is the great gift is you

get to be somebody else for a while and you get to see the world through their eyes. it's something different and they will hopefully come to understand better. >> well, we thank you for the gift you have given us. i know people have questions and we have the microphone. please come down the aisle. >> okay. >> this is the loveliest venue i've ever been in. >> it is gorgeous. >> it really is lovely. >> in a perfect setting for us. >> estimate is. >> hello, i'm still waiting to wake up. i cannot believe i'm actually face-to-face talking to you. [laughter] >> i am here waiting for me to wake up. [laughter]

>> hello, my friend and i are both educators from high school english teachers and i just want to -- i don't have a question. but i would like to tell you that your remark about how you might not be aware of how you affected people really sits in my heart. my friend and i were both -- we spearheaded an effort together to get "the kite runner" as part of our curriculum, which is very successful. i just wanted to know that the thousands of students have read your book and it has changed their life from saying and admitting that this is the only good but they have ever read to passing it down to their siblings and to change this. i just wanted to let you know that and we are grateful for that. >> i am not aloof to this

reality. i get stacks of letters from students who say what you have said. the singer that is not my intention when i go to write, it's something that just happens and i feel very honored by that. >> to build off of that, i read "the kite runner" in nine hours and my first few months as a peace corps volunteer. my host family thought i was nuts because i wouldn't eat until i finish the book. i worked for the start and that the initiative where we are trying to encourage schools across the nation to adopt emotional intelligence is a part of this. you could describe the relationship between the process of storytelling and empathy. how you might relate to each character and how you can get people to relate to these

characters. >> if it's a conscious effort, that's very important. the best way that i can achieve what you said and get as close as you can to the story tried to let them ahead in ways that feel spontaneous and real. to allow the story to be as truthful as to the extent of my abilities. i think the story is told that way, it will have an impact. it might make a positive impact

in the illuminating in some fashion. but every time i have tried in britain and agenda, it is always very political and self-conscious and i just see and hear myself on the pages, which is the last thing i want to happen. >> i have been following you for many years. and i thank you for your wonderful interview. sir, thank you for coming to washington. i'm sure that i speak for many people one i talk about feeling a sense of sadness when i read a book of yours. so i wanted to ask you about your characters. they continue to live with you, as characters come and you sit down and have coffee with them, or do you set them free once you

finish the book? >> they will lift me up until the time that i am done. i have written the final draft, i am done editing. i with me, not just when i'm writing, but when i am taking my son to his guitar lesson and when i am waiting for my daughter to finish swimming. so they become very real. like real people. i think that is a cliché. i don't think they belong to me. everyone will have the idea of these characters. people take great ownership of

them. i will give you a very dramatic example of that. when i wrote my first novel, there is a character the main character goes and rescues. he brings them back to the united states. is doing a book signing and a lady walked up to me. and i kind of joked and then i saw that she was serious. and i said, well, it's a novel. so he's not real. and she looked at me and i could tell that she was not in having us. she just said, will you we tell him that i'm praying for him. [applause] >> i said, god bless you, thank you. that's when i realized that these characters don't belong to me anymore.

>> yes? >> hello, i'm another question. one of my favorite lines from the book is you say the creative process is kind of thievery. soon after the first person who asked a question in this way. >> i got the book when it came out and i devoured it. and i was wondering if that rings true to you. if so, who do you steal from? >> there is a section in the book is set entirely in the magazine interview or an afghan woman who is a poet, and she's probably my favorite character in the novel. she really is. because initiatives introduced her for a second. >> she's very surprising to

people who have a conception of afghan women and how repressed they have been legally and politically and physically because she is such a modern woman. >> she is antithetical to everything. we meet her in the 50s and meet her in the 70s. she's a fiercely sexual creature. she is very brazen, she's very outspoken. extremely intelligent. insightful, a raging narcissist. a budding alcoholic, a terrible mother. a devoted mother. you know, and supremely talented red shoe won't cower before anybody. she is sort of this very interesting creature. she's doing this interview with this guy.

she says that writing is an act of thievery. he scratch any piece of beautiful writing and you'll find this honor. i'm not talking about plagiarism. you cannot write from a vacuum sometimes it is a tiny bit of someone's personality.

there are little bits that i found very intriguing. it is just the way that it is. >> she is my favorite characters well. >> thank you very much. >> if you think that the education experience impacts the creative writing process, and if so how, well, you know. >> the only thing that i can say is that my training time and work without speaking whole lot. >> tried journalism. [laughter] >> itami to persevere as a light at the end of the tunnel.

it is an act of perseverance. outside of that, i compartmentalize my life very well. in some ways it was a way to escape medicine. it is a profession that didn't stick with me very well. it just wasn't me. i kept those two parts of my life separate. there are illnesses and so on, so training comes in handy that i can kind of visit with to tell stories. maybe that is the extent of it. >> locum him i'm wondering how your books have been received in afghanistan and if they have raised any controversy there? >> i think my first book there, not so much a second book.

it is political he probably the least of my books. but if you have lived in exile for over two decades, and all of this stuff has been happening, people who actually live there this includes more liberal, professional afghans. it was a very decent amount of support. they are open to discuss some of the issues this might raise, particularly to tensions and so forth. but i think the more conservative past, the more

religious members of the community have their differences. rather that the book was airing our dirty laundry that was best kept quiet. especially if you're going to be afraid of subject matters and you're going to shy away from this, then you really have no business writing fiction. because your job really is to write about things that upset people. if they create dialogue.

>> this includes real resentment . you believe all of this had some kind of peace? >> i think in my experience with people that i've spoken to in afghanistan, they have a nuanced view afghans are and we all know that afghans have a monitor and everybody knows on that. so there is no history on the

soil. at the same time, i think that among many afghans, nato and u.s. presence has been seen as a safeguard against a doomsday scenario. against militia war when the kind of chaos that we saw in the 1990s. that has been -- i think it was fairly solid because of the things that you mention, but part of the tax that end up causing collateral damage.

it seems like a disaster. i think many fear a trepidation about the departure of foreign troops. >> what kind of state we have built in afghanistan and the henna altogether. can it do its primary job. which is to protect its population. that is kind of a bit of a, you know, that is a questionable notion right now. the jury is out on this on how prepared the state is.

>> political leadership has not growntical leadership has not grown to the test. hamid karzai being the best example. apparently there will be a large number of candidates. we seem to be carrying the mantle of afghan leadership. >> that is why this is a story within this country right now i

think that it is equally important are they going to be reasonably fair and perception of the afghan public. the answer is no to those things and i do worry that that could be, you know, a trigger for political instability. a potentially unravels into violence. that is a critical period coming up. >> i know that you are i just

want to survive my book tour. [laughter] >> then maybe open my mind from this and see what happens next. >> you have written about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and no siblings and generations of families. >> this is the central inspiration. >> well, it always speaks to me. and it's probably because -- and i said this in the past two others. it is because when i grew up in afghanistan, you know, in that society, seemed very difficult to overstate what an important role the family plays how you see yourself as a person. how you understand this.

>> you see yourself as a cousin, a brother, a grandson. families how you make sense of your identity. all the great experiences of life are contained within this organism. family, regret, forgiveness. content, reconciliation, duty and sacrifice. to me, it is an endless source of fascination and one that has always spoken to me. i'm not sure what happens next. but it is entirely possible. >> if you had been a girl of your generation, would you have had the education and the opportunity.

>> i happened to grow up in afghanistan. i fortunately got to see the final two years of an era of what many afghans would call the golden era. i remembered how startled i was told someone in france i was from afghanistan. they had no idea where that was, they had never heard of it. and i feel privileged that i got to live through that time in retrospect. you know, before the taliban and the soviets and when landmines and drug trafficking and bin laden. the country was beautiful and at peace. it was thriving. it was cultured, it was an influx of modernization, i won't go overboard. but it was making its way forward. it was a great place to grow up.

it sounds very funny that afghanistan was a great place to be a kid. but it really was greatly from my perspective. and i don't mistake my perspective for that of others. because it was a very poor country even then. so i think that if i was born a girl in those days, i certainly would have been educated. my mother was a vice principal of a very large high school. they were very outspoken, successful, professional women in my family. so i don't think it would have been a problem. >> we need to get back to those days. that is one of the key things that needs to be part of the future of afghanistan is the education of women. this has to be, and i i've said this many times, it has to be or cannot be used as a bargaining chip. women's rights and the economy and the role that it plays and

it is absolutely crucial and it absolutely must be nonnegotiable. [applause] >> you can see that all for all of us, for me personally, for everyone in this glorious place, this has been a very special, special time to hear you. to hear the thoughts about how you create these wonderful works of fiction. this i think is one of the greatest and best of all. the book is "and the mountains echoed." it is so compelling. written by khaled hosseini. a morality play told over generations. as was said. set in this place, but also in

california. with beams that are universal to all of us enact thank you. i appreciate that. i have learned so much from your program. and i'm a great admirer of yours. you are driven at what you do. when they call me i you'd be doing this interview, i was floored. this has been a real privilege. thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> an appetite for wonder is the name of the book. the author is doctor richard dawkins. he has written a number of books that are bestsellers.

doctor, why did you choose to write an autobiography at this point? >> it seemed like a good moment to do so. my mother. >> up to the age of 25, it is part of the natural watershed in my life. so we didn't make sense of this with the two books. this is the first one. it takes us through childhood,.

>> that was such a great thing. and it is so interesting. >> who are john were john and jean dawkins. >> they were my parents. and they -- my father was a biologist. his career began with schooling that was rather the same time as mine. he did research, i did research.

>> and then she had this for a while and i was brought up along that time. my mother was an art student. they have a shared love of wild things brought up in an atmosphere with the love of nature. >> my parents had spent part of this time in religion. again, things that had happened.

but in some ways changed it. >> when did you lose that connection? >> i suppose finally at the age of about 16. when i was at school. but i have my doubts at the age of about nine years old. especially when i was brought up in this timeframe. >> when you asked her parents about this, how did they respond >> i think my mother taught me many stories and what she believed. then when i went to school, i learned about it more and. >> how did this come about as a book? >> will, about 10 years before i wrote it in 1966, i was asked by

my boss about giving a lecture. he was on sabbatical leave. and i wrote about it, which overshadowed secession of individuals. all the lecturers in 1966. and i vaguely talked about writing it all down. and i finally did so. but you could find almost the same as the lectures i gave in 1966. so i think that in about 1972 or

1973, when there was a strike, i couldn't do my research. and i thought, now is the time to start writing. >> because you didn't need electricity? >> no, we didn't need electricity, is a manual typewriter. >> in your book you talk about john maynard smith. >> it is a very wonderful man from a distinguished biologist. a wonderful character. he was irreverent and talking to students about real work. and he inspired generations and he inspired me.

although i was never actually a student. this many of his ideas were incorporated in this way. >> how did your life change? did you become a celebrity professor in a sense? >> not immediately. the book talks about things very well. it did cause a bit of a id cause a bit of a sensation. talking to people and it did start to happen nine. and it did change my life in sunny on a new course of the writing of other books.

>> you are quite well-known, not only as a scientist, but also as an atheist as well. when did you start writing about that in earnest? >> well, i suppose all of my books are all about the argument of design. which is still, i think, the dominant reason why most people will give, believing in us. they will say look at the nature, look at the trees, flowers, and of course, it that is not what it is about. this is the opposite. it wasn't an attempt to explain that to people.

it is something like by the evidence would have a part of this. so it was part of the book and in all my other books, they could be interpreted in the same way. here the book is explicitly part of this since 2006. that is why i think it is better in fact. but apart from that, my book hasn't been that they voted in the way that it has been considered. >> you said your hero was charles darwin in an appetite for wonder. >> indeed, yes. he was a brilliant thinker and explainer. one of the things that i find surprising is that darwin's idea

was very simple and anyone should be able to understand it, taking 200 years after newsom. and you might think that what he did was more difficult to think of. taking into account the laws of motion and how it is with the human mind. you cannot help but wonder about this immensely powerful idea. >> someone that has written about science and ideas, what is it like to write about yourself? >> it is kind of difficult. there is an embarrassing factor writing about one's self. we have overcome this right away. i like to think that i can enjoy

it. >> did you end up enjoying a? >> esca microcredit. >> the living memories is not exactly systematic system. ..