The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner, also known as Parvana, is a 2000 children’s novel by Canadian author and activist Deborah Ellis. It centers on an 11-year-old girl named Parvana who, due to her family’s circumstances, is forced to defy the Taliban and their repressive laws to become the breadwinner for her family. Exploring themes of human connection, maturation and bravery, and the repression of women, The Breadwinner was critically acclaimed upon its release and has had over 40 print runs in the United States alone. Four sequels followed it: Parvana’s Journey; Mud City; My Name is Parvana; and One More Mountain. Prior to beginning the series, Ellis spent several months interviewing Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Her book Women of the Afghan War is the outgrowth of her conversations with women in the refugee camps, and her interviews with children there prompted her to write The Breadwinner. Frequently selected as assigned reading for middle school students, The Breadwinner won the Peter Pan Award and the Middle East Book Award. Its 2017 film adaptation, executive produced by Angelina Jolie and directed by Nora Twomey, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Ellis is the Canadian author of over 30 books and an activist who is very committed to anti-war causes. Her novels tend to focus on people the media neglect. In addition to global issues explored in The Breadwinner and The Heaven Shop, which focuses on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Malawi, she tells local stories in books such as Looking for X, which addresses day-to-day life in a poverty-stricken area of Toronto. A philanthropist who donates most of the profits from her books to charitable organizations, Ellis has donated more than $1 million in royalties from The Breadwinner series to the charity Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. She was named to the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada and won the Governor General’s Award and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. In 2022, she published Step, a collection of 10 short stories that each depict a child’s 11th birthday. The stories are set in various parts of the world and focus on rendering everyday life.

This summary is based on the 2006 printed version of The Breadwinner by Groundwood Books publishers.

Content warning: This guide references violence.

Plot Summary

As The Breadwinner begins, Parvana is 11 and lives in Kabul, Afghanistan, with her father; her mother, Fatana; her older sister, Nooria; and her younger siblings, Maryam and Ali. Life is hard; the family lives in one room with almost nothing, their possessions having dwindled each time one of their previous homes were bombed. Parvana’s father loses his job when the school where he teaches is bombed; he also loses part of his leg in the explosion. Parvana’s mother loses her job writing for a radio station when the Taliban’s laws forbidding female participation in public life are enacted. One day, Taliban soldiers enter their house and arrest Parvana’s father for having a foreign education. Parvana and her mother go to the local jail to beg for his release, but the guards beat them as punishment for daring to step out of their place as women.

Parvana’s mother becomes deeply depressed, refusing to move from her mattress. This leaves the family in a dire position, as women are not allowed to work or even travel unaccompanied by men in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. Mrs. Weera, a former physical education teacher, comes to stay with Parvana’s family to help, and Parvana’s mother begins to emerge from her depression. Fatana and Mrs. Weera begin to publish a clandestine magazine, which they smuggle back and forth from Pakistan. The two women come up with the idea of disguising Parvana as a boy by cutting her hair and dressing her in clothes that belonged to her late brother, Hossain, so she can work and buy groceries. Parvana takes up her father’s business of reading and writing letters for illiterate people in the market. While she is there, Parvana forms a mysterious friendship with a woman in the window above her location at the market; the woman throws gifts down to her. She also starts a business with a girl named Shauzia—also dressed as a boy—with whom she used to go to school. Although they were never close before, necessity makes them allies. They start a portable shop using trays to hold the items they sell. They make the money for the trays by digging graves.

As Parvana battles to keep her family afloat, she becomes closer to her older sister, Nooria. Nooria soon announces that she’s leaving Kabul for Mazae-E-Sharif in the north, where she hopes to get married and go to college. Her mother and her younger siblings accompany her, but Parvana stays behind. After work one day, Parvana meets a girl named Homa, who ran away from Mazar-e-Sharif and is incredibly upset. When Parvana takes her home, she learns that the Taliban took Homa’s city and murdered her family; she barely escaped with her life. Mrs. Weera is kind to Homa and takes her in, but Parvana is terrified about the fate of her family. A blessing comes when Parvana’s father is unexpectedly released from prison, but he was clearly beaten and mistreated. Mrs. Weera, Homa, and Parvana slowly nurse him back to health, and when he’s strong enough, Parvana and her father leave for Mazar-e-Sharif, traveling in the back of a truck.

Shauzia plans to run away so she won’t have to get married. As Parvana says goodbye to her now-close friend, the pair make a pact to meet each other 20 years later at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Mrs. Weera and Homa also make plans to travel, in their case to Pakistan to help women in exile. Parvana takes one last look at the mountains of Afghanistan. Although the future is uncertain, she feels hope.