The book Zahra’s song is the tale of Zahra Ahmad an Hausa girl in
the late 1900s who became fascinated by the Western culture and her
desires to evaluate between her people’s crude ways and the western
world.
Zahra’s song is the journal of a traditional Muslim Hausa girl
growing up in the Northern part of Nigeria in 1901 to 1921. She was
obsessed with Western education and civilization at a time fellow
villagers still detested any form of western culture and
civilization; blaming the strange men with different skin color who
had spoiled their land with their strange customs.
Are our lives bound by Fate, or do we have the power to choose our
Destiny? Karin Ezeakor addresses this question through the moving
story of Zahra, a young Moslem girl growing up in Nigeria. Zahra
dreams of faraway places and of an education generally unavailable
to a girl of her station. We follow Zahra through her adventures and
her pursuit of education; we experience with her the love, loss,
joys, and triumphs along the way. Karin Ezeakor paints a loving
portrait of a girl growing up, set against the vivid backdrop of
rural and urban Africa in the early part of the twentieth century.
This is a gripping and sensitive tale—a melody you’ll keep hearing
long after the final note of Zahra’s Song