Parvana steps up as the breadwinner, cutting her hair and disguising herself as a boy named Kaseem so she can earn money and buy food for her family. Without an adult male to provide for them, they will not survive. Parvana and her family are devastated, but it soon becomes apparent that One day, the Taliban arrests him for having a “foreign” education. Parvana remembers their old life, including their “Western” toilet, but she cannot remember a time before the war: “Kabul had once been beautiful… For most of Parvana’s life, the city has been in ruins, and it was hard for her to imagine it another way.”Įvery day, Parvana accompanies her father to the marketplace where he sells his services as a reader and writer. The family lost their house, most of their belongings and even their eldest son, Hossain, to the frequent bombings. To give up their regular jobs - her mother was a writer and her father was a university professor. Her parents are both academics who attended Oxford, but the Taliban’s strict regime forced them Parvana and her family, which includes her 17-year-old sister, Nooria, and her two-year-old brother, Ali, live in a bombed-out one-room apartment in Kabul. The Breadwinner goes beyond the sensationalized media headlines and takes readers into war-torn, Taliban-run Afghanistan through the eyes of 11-year-old Parvana ( see also Canada and the War in Afghanistan). These stories became the basis and inspiration for The Breadwinner series.

During that time, she began to interview and record the stories of women in the camps. In the 1990s, author and activist Deborah Ellis travelled to Pakistan to help people in Afghan refugee camps.

The breadwinner parvana's journey