Parvana by Deborah Ellis

Parvana by Deborah Ellis

Parvana written by Doborah Ellis is a story about a young girls fight to survive in Afghanistan. Although this is a fictional story it also depicts the lives of many Afghanistan families which live in Afghanistan during the war.

Within the exposition, Parvana’s father is taken to goal as a complication and as a result, Parvana becomes the carer of the family. As all the women in Afghanistan are forced to stay indoors, Parvana’s only option is to dress as a boy and collect food from the market for her family. Ellis (2000) encourages readers to look beyond the need for survival and emphasises on the importance of family.

Through themes within the book, from bombs dropping to Taliban bashings, Ellis (2000) creates a ‘deep literacy’ where the characters immerge the reader into an emotional inner world. Ellis (2000) exposes the reader to experience the families despair with language features such as fear, tension, sacrifice and loneliness to draw feelings for the characters and stretch imagination.