This presentation felt different. It was held in a church, not a bookstore. A large cross hung from the ceiling at the front of the church. The author, Khaled Hosseini, spoke from the pulpit, with the cross vividly behind him. The audience was unusually diverse – in age, sex, ethnicity, and class. You had to pay $40 to get in, the money going in part to a charitable organization called Trust in Education which helps poor people in Lalander, Afghanistan. The mood was solemn.

Hosseini began by reading a disturbing passage from his new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The novel is about the friendship of two Afghan women, Laila and Mariam, and how their friendship is affected by what has happened in Afghanistan over the last thirty years. Hosseini read from a passage where Laila is in labor. Mariam takes Laila to a hospital but they are turned away because the hospital only serves men. In Afghanistan, men and women had to be seen at different hospitals.

Hosseini, who is not only a novelist but also a physician, described the terrible consequences of the hospital’s act. People in the audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats as Hosseini read.

When Hosseini finished, he put down his book and asked for questions. At first, it seemed as if there were none. But the audience was just taking a moment to regain its composure, and soon people came to the microphone to ask this best-selling writer about his work and life.

A young women got to the microphone first. She praised Hosseini on how well he was able to get inside the head of a woman and render female characters so true and real. She then asked: How do you do that?

Hosseini joked that he “must be in touch with my feminine side.” He said, more seriously, that it had taken him over two and a half years to write this novel, which for him was very slow. It took so long because, in creating female characters, he continuously struggled with the notion that women live in a different universe than men. He worried endlessly about writing from a women’s perspective. He worked long and hard trying to get inside a woman’s head, so he could persuasively depict Laila and Mariam. But the more he worked, the worse things got. Eventually, he “ran into a brick wall.”

But a moment came when things changed. As he worked on the novel, it developed that he was getting to know Laila and Mariam. He re-read passages where they spoke and discovered that he would no longer hear his own voice in them. He realized that, to create a female character, he had to stop trying to get inside a woman’s head. Instead, he had to let the characters speak to him. He had to let Laila and Mariam teach him about their sorrows and hopes. He had to listen to them and get to know them. And once he got to know them, the characters themselves “took over.”

A Thousand Splendid Suns is Hosseini’s second novel. His first, The Kite Runner, was an astonishing success. It was a number one bestseller, and it has been on the New York Times paperback fiction bestseller list for over 105 weeks. It has sold more than 4 million copies in the United States and 8 million around the world, in 34 different countries. Partly set in Afghanistan, his first novel explored male friendships.

Hosseini said that there was a lot more of his own life in The Kite Runner than in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini grew up in Afghanistan and Paris, and moved to the United States when he was 15. “The writer cannot help but put himself into the story in some form,” he noted. Characters cannot be created in a vacuum; they have to be grounded on something real. Interestingly, Hosseini felt that A Thousand Splendid Suns was a greater accomplishment than The Kite Runner, because it required a greater act of his imagination.

For now, Hosseini is not practicing medicine. He is on an open-ended sabbatical, writing full time. But what he learned as a doctor has helped him as a writer. People disclose the most delicate parts of their lives to their doctors. Being a doctor teaches you about human nature in all its frailty and contradictions, he told the audience. This kind of knowledge, as opposed to the more technical side of medicine, is an important source of his novels.

Hosseini’s final words were about the responsibility of the West to Afghanistan. Hosseini senses in the Afghan people a hunger for improvement, for learning, a tremendous drive and hope. Hosseini exhorted the West not to turn its back on them. “The West should not simply pack its bags and leave,” he said. Roads and schools must be built. Though the path forward may be extraordinarily difficult, there is no option but to stay committed. If the West leaves, “chaos will follow.”