Hosseini dominates 2008's book charts worldwide * Alison Flood

One is a doctor from Afghanistan, the other a Swedish anti-racism campaigner who has been dead for four years, but together Khaled Hosseini and Stieg Larsson can claim more positions on global bestseller charts than JK Rowling and teen vampire queen Stephenie Meyer.

The authors take the top two spots in an analysis of 2008's international fiction bestsellers by book trade magazines the Bookseller in the UK, Publishers Weekly in the US and Livres Hebdo in France, which ranked authors by their chart positions on the monthly bestseller lists in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, China, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. Aggregated total sales figures were not available, but by this reckoning Hosseini was the world's most popular author in 2008. His books - The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns - took top 10 spots in seven of the nine countries.