Fatima Bala

Set across Northern Nigeria, The Lies We Tell is a collection of short stories exploring the private lives of Hausa women and the secrets, compromises, and unspoken truths that shape their relationships. From the dye pits of Zaria to the rooftops of Abuja, Fatima Bala portrays women navigating family expectations, love, marriage, and the complicated demands of tradition. Grandmothers whisper to unseen spirits, young women confront the limits imposed on their ambitions, and families preserve fragile bonds through silences that can protect as easily as they can wound. Blending wit, tenderness, grief, and elements of the supernatural, these stories reveal the hidden negotiations behind everyday life. Bala examines how women inherit expectations across generations, how affection can become a form of power, and how the truths people conceal sometimes sustain the very relationships they threaten to destroy. The Lies We Tell offers an intimate portrait of contemporary Northern Nigerian life, giving voice to women whose experiences are often kept behind closed doors.

Twenty-two-year-old Hafsatu Gaya seems to have everything in place: a promising career running a fashion label in Abuja, a loving family, and a relationship with one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. But when an impulsive decision brings long-buried family secrets to the surface, Hafsatu’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. She must confront painful truths about her family’s past and question how well she really knows the people closest to her. Running alongside Hafsatu’s story is the heartbreaking love story of Zuwaira, an orphan whose hopes for a better life are repeatedly thwarted by social expectations and circumstances beyond her control. Although the two women belong to different generations and occupy very different positions in society, their lives are connected by secrets that will eventually reshape both their futures. Set in Northern Nigeria, Hafsatu Bebi explores love, betrayal, faith, family obligations, and the tension between personal choice and destiny. It asks whether people can truly understand themselves when so much of their identity has been built on truths others have chosen to conceal.