The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner is a novel for young readers by the Canadian writer Deborah Ellis, first published in 2001.

The book is set in Kabul during the Afghan civil war, in the period when the Taliban controlled the city and women and girls were barred from school, from work and from the streets unless a male relative was with them. Parvana is eleven and lives with her family in a single room, and the family's way of getting by is her father, who can still move around the city until he is arrested. With no man to send to the market, Parvana cuts her hair and dresses as a boy, and takes over the work of earning what the household needs, which gives her a freedom she has never had and puts her in danger every day. Ellis spent months interviewing women and girls in refugee camps in Pakistan before writing the book, and used those conversations as the basis of the life she describes. Four sequels followed it, taking the same character further into the country and into the years that came after.