by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu

translated from the Hausa by Aliyu Kamal

cover image by Glenna Gordon

125 pages

"Utterly addictive" —Nnedi Okorafor

Beginning in the late 1980s, northern Nigeria saw a boom in popular fiction written in the Hausa language.

Known as littattafan soyayya ("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.

It's the first full-length novel by a woman ever translated from Hausa to English.

And it's quite unlike anything you've ever read before.

Also available as an eBook

Other reviews:

Subhashini Navaratnam's review in Pop Matters

Anike's review in Muslimah Media Watch (Warning: Spoilers!)

Aishwarya Subramanian's review in The Sunday Guardian

Deepa Dharmadhikari's review in Live Mint

About the Author

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