On March 4, 1952, Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel The Old Man and the Sea. He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his bestselling works.  Old Man and the Sea was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida. Find Hemingway at the library and on hoopla.

On this day in 1965, Khaled Hosseini, author of the best-selling novel “The Kite Runner,” is born in Kabul, Afghanistan. Hosseini’s semiautobiographical book was credited with helping to educate Western readers about Afghanistan, a country many of them knew little about. Hosseini, who had no formal training as an author, has credited his native country’s strong tradition of oral storytelling as an influence on his writing style. “The Kite Runner” was published in 2003, and eventually became an international best-seller. The novel has been translated into more than 40 languages, and a big-screen adaptation was released in 2007. That same year, Hosseini published his second novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” which also became a best-seller. Find Khaled Hosseini at the library, on hoopla and in OverDrive.