Search

After her father's death, Parvana, now thirteen-years-old, continues to search for her mother in war-torn Afghanistan, joining with two younger children who are also struggling to survive.

Parvana is an eleven-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Zulaikha, a thirteen-year-old girl in Afghanistan, faces a series of frightening but exhilarating changes in her life as she defies her father and secretly meets with an old woman who teaches her to read, her older sister gets married, and American troops offer her surgery to fix her disfiguring cleft lip.

Fifteen-year-old Parvana recounts memories from the past four years of her life as she awaits foreign military forces to determine her fate and wonders if she will ever be reunited with those she loves.

Parvana lives in Afghanistan where women are not allowed to do anything because of the Taliban who run the country so she transforms herself into a boy to become the breadwinner.

Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so she can provide support for her family after her father's arrest.

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan.