Khaled Hosseini. The kite runner (№ 426756)

But especially fiction and truth merged when I found our old house in the Wazir Akbar Khan area, the house I grew up in, just as Amir grew up in the house next door. It took me three days of searching, I did not remember the address, and everything around me changed beyond recognition. But I searched and searched until I came across a familiar arch.
I entered the house and the soldiers who lived there now were kind enough to allow me my nostalgic tour. And I saw that the paint on my house, as well as on the house of Amir, peeled off, the grass withered, the trees in the courtyard were no more, and the wall that enclosed the yard almost collapsed. Like Amira, I was struck by how small my house was compared to what lived in my memory. And - I swear! - when I went outside the gate, I saw on the asphalt the same tar spot in the form of a Rorschach blon, which Amir also saw. I said goodbye to the soldiers and walked away, and there was a growing feeling in me that if I hadn't written The Wind Runner, my encounter with my stepfather's house would have shocked me much more. After all, I've already experienced it - in the book. I stood next to Amir at the gate of his house and with him I experienced the loss. I saw him put his hands on the rusty pins of the fence and we peered together into the sagging roof and crumbled porch.
You'd say fiction stole life, well, that's probably how it is.

Explanation of the quote:

2013 edition
The story takes place in pre-war Kabul of the 1970s. In this magical city, shimmering with all shades of gold and azure, live two weather boys, Amir and Hassan. One belonged to the local aristocracy, the other to a despised minority. One father was handsome and important, the other was chrome and pathetic. Master and servant, prince and beggar, handsome and crippled. But there were no people in the world closer than these two boys. Soon the Kabul idyll will be replaced by terrible storms.