More than 1,000 people turned out to hear best-selling author Khaled Hosseini during his appearance at Brenau University Oct. 23-24 - the largest crowd ever to attend a Brenau event other than commencement exercises.

Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns," two novels set in his native Afghanistan in the three decades following the invasion of the country in 1980 by the Soviet Union. Both have become international best-sellers, published in dozens of languages and selling millions of copies.

"The Kite Runner," published in 2003, is a story of two boys from different social and religious classes who grew up as friends in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion. "A Thousand Splendid Suns," published in 2007, is about two Afghani women who grow closer during the oppressive Taliban rule two decades later.

Hosseini´s literary work, said Brenau University President Ed Schrader, has helped Americans in particular have a better understanding of the isolated war-ravaged country. However, current events in the country that includes a resurgence of the Taliban, suggests that "the long, long struggle that Dr. Hosseini has so richly depicted in his writing is far from over."

Brenau was one of only half a dozen venues that Hosseini picked for lectures this fall. Although some of his other appearances drew much larger crowds, his Oct. 23 presentation at Brenau packed Pearce Auditorium. In addition, several hundred people viewed the presentation via a live video feed into Hosch Theater and the Thurmond McRae Lecture Hall on the Gainesville, Ga., campus.

Hosseini, wearing a gray pin-striped suit and open-collar blue shirt, appeared on stage with Maria Ebrahimji, a 1998 Brenau graduate who is currently director and executive editorial producer for network booking at CNN in Atlanta. Rather than lecture from a podium, Hosseini prefers to address audiences conversationally, prompted by impromptu questions from a moderator or audience members. Ebrahimji specializes in Middle Eastern issues with CNN and for more than an hour peppered the author with her own questions and several submitted in advance by Brenau students and faculty.

Hosseini grew up in an affluent family in Kabul. His mother taught Farsi and history and his father was a lawyer in the nation´s diplomatic corps. During the father´s posting to the embassy in Paris, the Soviets invaded the country, and Hosseini, at 15, with his family became a political exile in the United States. Although he said that he had been writing "ever since I could pick up a pencil," he had to learn to speak and write English. He completed high school, college and medical school in California and then, toward the end of his eight years after practicing internal medicine, began writing his first novel - acclaimed for its technical merit as well as for its compelling story.

On Oct. 24 Hosseini met with close to 200 students from the university´s Women´s College and Brenau Academy in Hosch Theater. The relaxed question-and-answer session, moderated by Brenau Provost Helen Ray, elicited details about the writer and his work ranging from how he met his wife of 15 years to people in real life on whom he based some characters in his novels.

While he was completing his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, Hosseini flew home one weekend to surprise his parents, who lived in northern California. At a party in his parents´ home he met a law student named Roya, a woman from another Afghan refugee family. They talked only for about an hour, but on his return flight to Los Angeles, he says, he decided "she was the one." When he got off the plane, he made a phone call that put in motion a betrothal the following weekend and a wedding six weeks later, "which is fast even by Afghani standards." They now have two children and live in San Jose, Calif.

Hosseini elaborated on the challenge of writing from a female point of view in his second novel - a problem that was almost "crippling" to him as a writer as he "obsessed over the authenticity of the female voice." Once he decided to write about them "just as people," however, "I disappeared from the work … . And these two women began to speak for themselves."

Hosseini said that he is optimistic that emphasis on education is emerging in the new Afghanistan where more than 6.5 million children have enrolled in schools since 2002. And in a nation when 80 percent of the women are illiterate dues to centuries of repression, exacerbated by the Taliban, it is particularly gratifying that 40 percent of those school children are girls.

Brenau is home to three young Afghan women who are studying in the United States preparing to return home after they complete their degrees to help with rebuilding Afghanistan - juniors Shamim Siddiqi and Khadija Safi and first-year student Najia Nasim.

The three were recognized by Schrader at the outset of Hosseini´s presentation, but they also chatted amiably with the author in Farsi at two receptions on campus they all attended. Safi, who conceded that she had been troubled by the way Hosseini depicted women in "A Thousand Splendid Suns" when she first read it, she now understands that Hosseini used his literary license as a fiction writer to advance the story. "Now that I understand it is a novel," she said, "I really like it. As a novel, it is very good."

Siddiqi also said she had been initially disappointed when she first read "The Kite Runner" but found Hosseini´s message of hope about Afghanistan to be uplifting. "His thoughts," she said, "are very positive."