literary prize

The ‘useless’ book that won the biggest prize in Nigerian literature

I was fascinated because I grew up in the North, first Kano and then Jos, but I was discovering something new about the North in Abubakar’s book. There was lust and passion but above all, a clear-eyed exposition of what it means to be human and a woman and middle-aged in Northern Nigeria riven not just by religion but by religious crises.