Atiq Rahimi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1962. Leaving Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union, he obtained political asylum in France, and after earning a doctorate in communications, works as a documentary filmmaker.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 4, 1965. He received a bachelor's degree in biology from Santa Clara University in 1988 and a medical degree from the University of California-San Diego's School of Medicine in 1993. He was a practicing internist from 1996 to 2004. While in medical practice, he began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published in 2003. His other books include A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed. In 2006, he was named a Goodwill Envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. He established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.