Paradoxes of Religion in the Prose Fiction of Northern Nigerian Women: A Study of Asabe Kabir Usman’s Destinies of Life and Phebe Veronica Jatau’s The Hound

The Nigerian northern bloc is an extensive, highly variegated and multi-layered, geo-political and cultural space. It forms a pendulous stretch from the east to the west coast of the northern part of Nigeria and this is also inclusive of a large middle belt. In this large space, there is a plurality of cultures, traditions, peoples, religions, linguistic groups and histories—a potpourri of sorts. Thus, a discerning reader of the emerging literatures of this region cannot regard them in any kind of homogenous or monolithic manner. There is, therefore, an immediately striking contradiction that is subsumed in the very notion of ̳Northern Nigerian‘ literature. The heterogeneity of this region is complexly symbolic of the multiplicities, divergences and the syncretism of the influences that nuance the lives and realities of the people of the entire nation.