Parents and teachers struggling to explain the war in Afghanistan can call on a new novel to help children picture life under the Taliban.

Billed as the only children's novel on the subject, The Breadwinner follows 11-year-old Parvana as she struggles to avoid beatings, bombings and death by starvation.

``The Breadwinner is a powerful depiction of life under the Taliban regime, told honestly and directly, in a way children will really understand,'' said the publishers.

Aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, it depicts Parvana masquerading as a boy -- women and children must stay home in hardline Afghanistan -- as she gathers food for her starving family following her father's arrest by the ruling Taliban.

Although written before the current conflict began, the survival story has all the land mines, beatings, brutality and restrictions familiar to Afghans today.

``Bombs had been part of Parvana's whole life. Every day, every night, rockets would fall out of the sky, and someone's house would explode,'' reads one passage in the book, written by Canadian author Deborah Ellis, a 41-year-old counselor in Toronto, who had paid frequent visits to refugee camps in Pakistan during Afghanistan's 20 years of conflict.

``When the bombs fell, people ran. First they ran one way, then they ran another, trying to find a place where the bombs wouldn't find them.''

On one trip, Ellis heard of a girl who had cut off her hair, wore boy's clothes and worked in a market to support her mother and sisters -- just like the heroine in The Breadwinner.

In the novel, 11-year-old Parvana must avoid land mines and suffer beatings at the hand of the Taliban.

``We owe it to our children to be honest about the world and to provide them with material written specially for them,'' Ellis said.

Oxford University Press said it rushed publication after worried parents, teachers and librarians struggled to answer children's questions in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

(Agencies)