Lying To The Taliban: The Breadwinner Movie Adaptation

In this adventurous novel by Deborah Ellis, a girl whose father has been taken away has to masquerade as a boy to feed her family. As you read this book you will experience a young 11-year-old girl named Parvana who has to look and act as if she were a boy. This is because her father was imprisoned and can’t earn money for the family. She lives in a place where women can’t go out by themselves so she has to go out as a boy and earn money for the family. If she gets caught she would be killed! Her mother is always worried about Parvana when she goes out to the market.

In the Breadwinner is told in a third person all-knowing point of view the only thing about it is that the storyteller only knows Parvana’s thoughts, and not anybody else's. The story takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1996. The Breadwinner is a novel based on what life is really like in Afghanistan for a girl. Parvana lives in an apartment building with her mom, younger sister, older sister, and an infant brother. Life without a man or boy is scary and dangerous.

I liked the book because it was a new topic for me, I didn’t know how it was like in Afghanistan before reading this novel and especially how tough it is to be a girl there. I never wanted to put the book down because I always wanted to find out what happened to Parvana next. It seemed so real that I could imagine what was happening in my head and I understood what Parvana was feeling. In my opinion, the way women are treated is wrong because of the Taliban laws and how they don’t want women to do anything but sit at home all day while the men do all the work.

I would say that the book would be for ages 11 and up I even think that adults might enjoy this novel. The reason I think kids under the age of 10 would not like itis because they would not fully understand the concept of unfairly treating women and the concept of equal rights. As well as not understanding concepts, kids under the age of 7 or so might get scared of the fact of a girl being killed just for going outside. In conclusion, I think that this was a very interesting topic to really think about. This book really had an impact on me by making me more aware of the world around me and how life is in Afghanistan.