Born in Kano, she was taken out of primary school at the age of 12 to marry a man in his 40s whom she had never met before. At first, she enjoyed the presents received at the wedding and the golden ornaments decorating her new home, but she had no idea what marriage was about.
Today, that illiterate girl who didn’t even know how to boil water and who, one year and eight months after the wedding, was finally sent back to her father’s house in disgrace, has become one of northern Nigeria’s most well-known writers and the first female Hausa-language author to be translated into English.
How is that for a pick-me-up for aspiring novelists…We should probably start having two writers for the week..What do you think?
Read her inspiring story here