Deborah Ellis Quotes

“Making her way across the desolate Afghan countryside, she meets other children who are strays from the war: an infant boy in a bombed-out village, a nine-year-old girl who believes she has magical powers over land mines, and a boy with one leg.”

“She wanted to tell people about him. That he was a teacher, that he had lost his leg when his school was bombed. That he had loved her and told her stories, and now she was all alone in this big, sad land.”

In 2001, a war is raging in Afghanistan as a coalition of Western forces tries to oust the Taliban by bombing the country. Parvana’s father has died, and her mother, sister, and brother have gone to a faraway wedding, not knowing what has happened to her father.

“Parvana doesn’t know where they are, but sets out alone to find them — masquerading as a boy. Her journey only becomes more perilous as the bombs begin to fall.”

The novel itself is excellent. The character journey accompanied by the physical is a favourite. The confusion and disjoint with reality experienced by the characters is palpable.

“Kaseem, Parvana replied, giving him her boy-name. She didn’t think any more about whether to trust someone with the truth about herself. The truth could get her arrested, or killed. It was easier and safer not to trust anyone.”

The children travel together because it is easier than being alone. As they forget their own family in the war zone that Afghanistan has become, their resilience, imagination and luck help them survive.

“She did not speak to these men of those times. She also did not tell them that her father had been in prison, arrested by the Taliban for being educated in England. ‘You can stay here with us in this village,’ one of the men said. ‘You can make your home here.’ ‘I have to find my family’.”

“Sometimes they were able to ride in the back of a cart or a truck from village to village or from camp to camp as they searched for the rest of the family. Often, though they had to walk, and the lessons made the journey go by more quickly.”

“A small group of mud huts -a tiny village - was in ruins. Parvana recognized the sort of damage that came from bombs. There had been a war going on in Afghanistan for more than twenty years. Someone was always bombing someone else.”