The recently published Young Adult novel called Parvana is one of the first novels in this category to come out since last year. Published under the title The Breadwinner in Canada, this is the story of an eleven-year-old Afghani girl, Parvana, who is dressed as a boy to write letters for people and to sell her remaining family possessions at a local market, after her father is imprisoned by the Taliban. The book is dedicated to 'the children of war', positioning the young, almost certainly Western reader as outside the story but charitable and sympathetic.

An interesting consequence of the alliances and empathy available to us in current times, is the manageability of both loathing the enemy (the Taliban), and saving a subgroup, Afghani women, who we can construct as abused, oppressed, and in need of 'our' advocacy. The American salvation narrative is strengthened rather than weakened by the events of September. We can name the enemy (who has the face of Osama Bin-Laden) but appease our liberalism by easily identifying the 'good' face of the 'tribe' as well: the women, who would be much better off if they were more like 'us'.

In Parvana (which is written by a white Canadian woman), it is possible to argue that the family we are involved with are really stand-in Westerners. Although they are Afghani, the father has commendably been educated in Britain, and both parents speak English (Parvana's father is very excited at one stage in the book to find another woman who speaks English, thus they can easily identify her as both good and educated). We sympathize with them further, because they were middle class (like us!) and their lives are in ruins thanks to the Taliban's cruelty. We can feel suitably outraged that the family has lost 'everything' (including the father's leg when the school he taught in was attacked). Their home (first a house, then an apartment, finally just a bombed out shelter) gets smaller and smaller as the evil Taliban victimise them. The reader can imagine losing her own home.

In fact, when he is snatched from his family, the father has just finished telling the story of how Afghanistan defeated Britain in 1880. The seeming pride he displays at Afghani independence is very quickly dispelled, however, when the Taliban almost immediately burst in, during this story, to arrest him - for having been educated in Britain. Oddly, the independence so proudly expressed in one paragraph is almost immediately dissipated as the British are now portrayed as the heroes - the nation that 'educated' the father and that the Taliban resents and punishes. Do the Afghans benefit from Independence then, or not? This book would suggest that they are much worse off without the 'help' they receive.

Parvana's father (and then Parvana herself) reads letters for people in the market. So his symbolic link with the outside (Western) world is well established, and again proves his value. We can once more be safely outraged at his treatment, since he is more like us than not. He fits into a long tradition of poor but noble peasants. He is worthy as a role model Afghan, because he is educated and has been, it may be implied, (almost) as badly treated as Americans on the date.

Parvana and her siblings are also substitute Westerners. She is often confused by what she sees around her (women in burqas), totally befuddled by the politics of the war, naïve about the circumstances in her own country. The only reason she knows about land mines is because someone from the United Nations once came into her class to talk about them (167). Even her father seems totally bemused by Afghani politics ' I don't know why they arrested me. How would I know why they let me go?' (162).

And commerce is the perceived desire. Parvana and the other girl, whom she discovers is also dressing up as a boy to provide for her family, are singularly interested in finding ways to make more money. Oddly, they speak remarkably like Americans, and the dialogue has them saying things like; ' Hey, maybe if we can work together, we can come up with a better way to make money!' (100).

In addition, there is not one Afghan in this book who doesn't wish to move away, to a Western country. The glimmer of hope for the girls is that one day they'll meet at the Eiffel Tower (167). (let's hope none of them aspire to Australia, given the tiny percentage of those currently on Nauru assessed as 'genuine' refugees!). No suggestion is made that life as immigrants might be just as, if not more, difficult than the life they are leading. It's the American dream, imposed seamlessly. It's hard not to wonder, too, in what ways this feeds into currently hyperbolised fears of immigration and the so-called 'refugee crisis'. What if everyone in the world really does want to come to the West? Then what?

There is also an interesting politics of envy exemplified in the book … above all, Parvana says, she just wants 'a normal, boring life'(139). It's not hard to interpret this as meaning she wants the normal, boring White Western life that the readers (they should remember) are lucky enough to be leading. We can walk away from this book with a great sense of superiority.

Strangely, a judgmental, almost sneering tone creeps in at various stages in the book. The authorial ideology seems implacably one of Afghanis as essentially barbaric, certainly illogical. The father explains history in the region in this way: 'After the Soviets left, the people who had been shooting at the Soviets decided they wanted to keep shooting at something, so they shot at each other' (16). Similarly, and amazingly, later in the novel someone suggests, about Kabul, 'maybe someone should drop a big bomb on the country and start again' (140).

The author also cannot stop herself from imposing her own position on her Afghani characters. Her outsider point of view, her judgment of Islamic women, is evident. When Parvana asks her father how women in burqas manage to see where they're going, her father tells her 'they fall down a lot'. Similarly, at another point in the novel, Parvana wonders how women in burqas recognize each other at all. These are hardly credible as issues, except perhaps for outsiders.

The book is also written through a kind of Christian filter. This 'dumbing down' or simplifying of Islam again contributes to the generation of reader outrage. It means we don't have to try to work too hard to understand any perspective other than our own. It is explained to Parvana that 'the word Taliban meant religious scholars, but Parvana's father told her that religion was about teaching people how to be better human beings, how to be kinder. The Taliban are not making Afghanistan a kinder place to live' (16).

Overall, the Taliban in this book are, to a man, thugs. The one 'good' (albeit illiterate) Talib in this book is good because he is also oppressed - his wife is dead, presumably at the hands of the Taliban. We are told the Taliban hate all music. The most memorable scene in the books is one where the girls try to sell their wares in a stadium, only to find the Taliban cutting off the hands of thieves en masse. We are told that 'dogs had started eating some of the bodies, so there were pieces of people on the sidewalks and in the streets. I even saw a dog carrying a person's arm in his mouth' (154). This image of inhumane monstrosity has the tone of propaganda. The Taliban, in this book, is an irrational, barbaric Thing.

This portrayal of Arabic savagery is not new, of course. An Australian young adult novel called Jihad: A Girl's Quest to Settle the Past voices a similar cultural stereotype. The Mujahadeen are described as 'such hotheads that fervour spread through a group of them like a summer bushfire'. This image, interestingly, echoes again recently in the Weekend Australian Magazine, with reference to David Hicks, the Australian currently detained at Guantanamo Bay for fighting with The Taliban. 'He's a hothead,' says Lieutenant-Colonel Bernie Liswell. Guilty by association.

The book makes use of some very Western narratives and genres in its form. This is, in essence, a Cinderella story – Parvana, the member of the family with the least power (her sister is particularly unkind to her) becomes the recognized heroine. There is also a tradition of the regulation of the body, in literature, and more specifically, girls dressing as boys (Yentl springs to mind). Parvana dresses as a boy to become more acceptable, more powerful, more 'useful' - but the entire family 'dresses up' as Westerners, and this has the same effect on the reader. Parvana needs to do it to 'fit in'. The family needs to do it to be accepted by the reader. Parvana is transformed into a more acceptable version of herself.

In the aftermath of September 11, Kabul is described as not having a 'single intact building in the whole area, just piles of brick, dust and rubble' (107). It is simple to see this book as a film, and in fact the cover is already perfectly filmic, constituting terror: a photograph of a young girl's dark eyes, surrounded by faceless women in burqas.

Parvana ends on a note of ambiguity. The girl and her father leave Kabul to go searching for her mother and sister, who have by then disappeared, possibly to a refugee camp.

It will be interesting to have a closer look at the endings of children's literature in the years to come. Henry Giroux, in his new book Public Spaces, Private Lives: Beyond the Culture of Cynicism, written prior to September 11, suggested that Westerners no longer have much hope for the future, that Americans have an increasing inability to believe in a happy ending. In the midst of the current 'crisis' we may see more of this loose-ended resolution, as uncertainty increases with little hope of conclusion. But we the implied readers, thankfully remain safely (for the moment) at home.

Jo Lampert is a published writer of fiction, and is currently working as a Lecturer with the Faculty of Education and The Oodgeroo Unit at the Queensland University of Technology.

Roseanne Hawk, Jihad: A Girl's Quest to Settle the Past - And Say Goodbye, NSW: Albatross Books Pty Ltd, 1996: p.75.

Cameron Stewart, 'Nowhere Man' in the Weekend Australian Magazine, April 6-7 2002: p.17.