Balaraba Ramat Yakubu
Balaraba Ramat Yakubu
Balaraba Ramat Yakubu was born in 1959 and is a Nigerian writer and filmmaker. Besides writing novels in Hausa, she also writes, produces, and directs Kannywood films, Hausa-language cinema. She is the first Hausa-language author who is a woman to be translated into English. She has a literary prize named for her and her accomplishments, the Balaraba Ramat Yakubu Literature Prize for Hausa Drama.
Translated Titles by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu
Sin is a Puppy that Follows You Home
Beginning in the late 1980s, northern Nigeria saw a boom in popular fiction written in the Hausa language. Known as littattafan 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. Sin is a Puppy that Follows You Home is an Islamic soap opera complete with polygamous households, virtuous women, scheming harlots, and black magic.