TIME

Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner author on sea crossings, the power of storytelling and the importance of explaining harsh realities to children

What inspired you to write Sea Prayer, your new book about a refugee father preparing to make a perilous journey across the Mediterranean? Ever since I saw the photo of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey in 2015, I have wanted to write about sea crossings. My entry point into that story was as

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