The Breadwinner Series

It’s 2021, and the Taliban have regained power in Afghanistan. Parvana and Shauzia, the brave protagonists of The Breadwinner, must now flee to escape new dangers from an old enemy.

In Kabul, 15-year-old Damsa runs away to avoid being forced into marriage by her family. She is found by a police officer named Shauzia, who takes her to Green Valley, a shelter and school for women and girls run by Parvana.

It has been 20 years since Parvana and Shauzia had to disguise themselves as boys to support themselves and their families. But when the Taliban were defeated in 2001, it looked as if Afghans could finally rebuild their country. Many things have changed for Parvana since then. She has married Asif, who she met in the desert as she searched for her family when she was a child. She runs a school for girls. She has a son, Rafi, who is about to fly to New York, where he will train to become a dancer.

But Shauzia is still Parvana’s best friend. And Parvana is still headstrong, bringing her in conflict with her spoiled sister Maryam.
While Asif tries to get Maryam and Rafi on one of the last flights out of Kabul, the Taliban come to the school, and Parvana must lead the girls out of Green Valley and into the mountains.

In this stunning sequel to The Breadwinner Trilogy, Parvana, now 15-years-old, is found in a bombed-out school and held as a suspected terrorist by American troops in Afghanistan.

The girl does not respond to questions in any language and remains silent, even when she is threatened, harassed, and mistreated over several days. The only clue to her identity is a tattered shoulder bag containing papers that refer to people named Shauzia, Nooria, Leila, Asif, Hassan — and Parvana. As she waits for foreign military forces to determine her fate, she remembers the past four years of her life. Reunited with her mother and sisters, she has been living in a village where her mother managed to open a school for girls. But when local men threaten the school, she must draw on every ounce of bravery she possesses to survive the disaster that kills her mother and destroys the school. Ellis’ final novel in the series is harrowing, inspiring, and thought-provoking.

That was where she needed to be, in a field of purple flowers, where no one could bother her. She would sit there until the confusion left her head and the stink of the camp left her nostrils.

Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp in Pakistan and travelling to France. There she knows she would find a better life, away from the war in her home country of Afghanistan…

But escape is not so easy. Once she leaves the camp, she has no money, no food–and only her dog Jasper for company. But Shauzia is determined to find a new future for herself…

‘My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days of searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be.’

Parvana is alone. Her father is dead. A refugee in a land full of dangers, she must travel across Afghanistan to find her mother and sisters.

As she travels, Parvana finds friends — a starving, orphaned baby; a strange, hostile boy; a solitary girl who darts in and out of the minefields to find food.

Perhaps, with their help, she may one day be reunited with her family…

Imagine living in a country in which women and girls are not allowed to leave the house without a man. Imagine having to wear clothes that cover every part of your body, including your face, whenever you go out.

In this powerful and realistic tale, eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city during the Taliban rule. 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 in the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden by the Taliban government to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy and become the breadwinner.