Khaled Hosseini

Fiction, developing

Metafilter led me to "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge" (also PDF). David Lewis, Dennis Rogers, and Michael Woolcock observe that "the themes emanating from development...

Love among the ruins

Most writing on Afghanistan usually becomes a visual story: We encounter victims of war, usually without a limb, set against a backdrop of stunning beauty, rugged mountains, blue lakes, long stretches of sand, and beautiful...

‘I love reading contemporary writers’

Unlike my husband, I am not a prolific reader, and I read sporadically. Sometimes, one can see me juggling between three books and on other occasions, I could go weeks without reading anything. It normally depends on my...

Novels 'better at explaining world's problems than reports'

Novels are 'better at explaining world's problems than reports'. According to the study "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge" (HTML or PDF), people should read best-selling...

Boyd Tonkin: The surge in stories from an endless war

Change has come – but not yet to Afghanistan. We know that President-elect Obama intends to step up the pace of combat there. Every week brings news of British losses in the badlands of Helmand, and their rancorous aftermath at...

Facing life with unending optimism despite visual impairment

Wasim is an expert at chess and has won several national-level competitions He plays the veena and the tabla and has performed in many concerts in the U.S. Admirable: Mohammed Wasim working on his laptop in Bangalore....

147 authors fight it out for the Impac Dublin prize

In contention: Ian McEwan, author of On Chesil Beach. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje was nominated by 13 libraries, just ahead of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, which received 10 nods. The longlist in full: A Curious Intimacy...

Know literature, know the world

If you want to understand the lives of textile workers in Bangladesh, read Monica Ali. A team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics claim that stories and their writers can do just as much as academics...

Why novels are best at explaining world problems

Those of us who were lit majors have known it all along: The novel works better than academic literature to explain global problems. But now some economists are validating that notion. “Despite the regular flow of academic...

Best sellers

FOR week ending Nov 2, 2008: Non-fiction 1. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow 2. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne 3. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma 4. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose...

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