An award-winning short novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances during the Taliban's rule* in Afghanistan.
Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city. Parvana's father ― a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed ― works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.
As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner.
*The Taliban are an Islamic fundamentalist group that took control of Afghanistan in 1996, and was forced from power in 2001. The Taliban have now returned to power after waging a twenty-year insurgency.