Author Khaled Hosseini is "hopeful" about the long-term future of his home country, Afghanistan. He says extremist groups like the Taliban no longer have the kind of support they once enjoyed throughout the country.
"'The Taliban'... no longer means what it meant in the 1990's. ... Now it's a hodge-podge motley crew." Hosseini said.
"There's no appetite for the mindset or the return of the mindset of the Taliban nationally for [Afghanistan]."
Hosseini, whose new novel And the Mountains Echoed chronicles family relationships reaching from Afghanistan across the globe to America, believes fiction allows people to develop "empathy" in real world circumstances.
"One of the functions of literature is that it allows you to sort of kind of climb over the wall of your own life, and to inhabit the lives of people who are culturally, economically completely different from you. I think that's sort of the first step towards developing empathy."
Watch our entire PRESS Pass interview with Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote the 2004 best-seller Kite Runner, above to hear more from the author, including how his foundation is working with refugees in Afghanistan; some who are "still suffering from the Soviet War."