NEW PUBLICATION: Sin is a Puppy that Follows You Home by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu*

From Blaft Publications:

Beginning in the late 1980s, northern Nigeria saw a boom in popular fiction written in the Hausa language. Known as littattafa soyyaya ("love literature"), the books are often inspired by Hindi films - which have been hugely popular among Hausa speakers for decades - and are primarily written by women. They have sparked a craze among young adult readers as well as a backlash from government censors and book-burning conservatives.

Balaraba Ramat Yakubu has been one of the best-known authors in the genre since she published her first novel in 1987. She has also written, directed, and produced films for Kannywood, the Hausa-language film industry based in Kano, Nigeria. 

Sin is a Puppy that Follows You Home is an Islamic soap opera complete with polygamous households, virtuous women, scheming harlots, and black magic. It's the first full-length novel ever translated from Hausa to English. And it's quite unlike anything you've ever read before.

Blaft Publications is a small publishing house based in Chennai, India. Our list includes bestselling Indian and Pakistani crime novels, Nigerian soyayya fiction, experimental writing, pulp art, weird folktales, graphic novels, non-fictional manga, and picture book about girls who are in love with monsters.
________________
* I haven't read this novel.

Comments

  1. African Literature18 November 2012 at 01:42

    Though a nigerian,I am total stranger to the literatures of the north.But it would come as no surprise that indeed the book is filled the the literay ingredients necessary for a good read,looking to a chance to read her works..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Reading Pleasure18 November 2012 at 16:21

    real interesting

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marie Cloutier19 November 2012 at 01:54

    oh my. that sounds like quite a book! i did not know that there were islamic soap operas!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ms. Addison17 October 2016 at 15:11

    Awesome ! I will love to read this !

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Help Improve the Blog with a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10. Unexpected Joy at Dawn: My Reading

Image
Title: Unexpected Joy At Dawn Author: Alex Agyei-Agyiri Genre: Novel Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers Pages: 331 Year: 2004 Country: Ghana Unexpected Joy at Dawn is a story of two siblings, Nii and Mama Orojo, during the 1983 deportation of Ghanaians from Nigeria under the Shehu Shagari government. Nii, who is a Nigerian by blood but a Ghanaian by birth, was left in Ghana by his parents as they made the tortuous journey to Nigeria when Ghana enacted the Aliens Compliance Order of 1969, which made every person living in Ghana without the required papers an alien. His name was changed to reflect the name of his adopted parents. After fourteen years of living in hardship in Ghana, which involves living in slums even though he was an Assistant Manager at a bank, taking on multiple jobs, not being able to bury a wife and being chased around by market women for purported 'fraud', he decided to go to Nigeria in search of his roots. Besides, he entertained the fears of being...
Read more

69. The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye, A Review

Image
Title: The Clothes of Nakedness Author: Benjamin Kwakye Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series Genre: Fiction/Novel/Class Pages: 212 Year of First Publication: 1998 Country: Ghana For the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa Region Winners Reading Challenge Benjamin Kwakye 's novel The Clothes of Nakedness  is a compelling narrative directed at a Ghanaian audience, in particular. It reveals the economic hardships existing in our society; it also reveals the intricately woven relationships between the rich and the poor and how the 'seemingly' rich manipulate the poor to further that wealth-dom in this dual economic society where absolute riches exist side by side with abject poverty. The latter scenario is even more stark and pathetic if one knows that Nima and Kanda Estates, two neighbourhoods presented in the story, are real and not just fictional representation made concrete by Kwakye's brilliant mind. The story revolves around thr...
Read more

42. The Blinkards by Kobina Sekyi

Image
Title: The Blinkards, A Comedy and The Anglo-Fanti - A Short Story Author: Kobina Sekyi Genre: Play/Short Story Pages: 256 Publishers: Heinemann/Readwide ISBN: 978-0-435-92784-4 Year of Publication: 1974 (this edition, 1997) Country: Gold Coast (Now Ghana) Setting:  This book contains two stories: The Blinkards - a play and The Anglo-Fanti - a short story . Though the stories are from two different genres, one theme threads through them: the effect of absolute cultural osmosis or better still the consequences of swallowing an alien culture without much scrutiny, as happened in occupied countries popularly referred to by the occupiers as colonies (colonies of what? Ants? Bees?) Both stories took place in Cape Coast and the setting is very significant to the story. Apart from the author being a Fanti from Cape Coast, Cape Coast was the first point of introduction to colonial rule. As a seaport city, it was the first town that was brought under colonial rule; hence ...
Read more