Broken by Fatima Bala

One kiss was all it took to shake their world. . .

Fa’iza Mohammed was brought up to be a good and obedient daughter, the bearer of her family’s honour and virtue. When she left Abuja for university in Canada, armed with her mother’s words of caution, her father’s faith in her, and under the escort of her older brother, she had no idea just how much her life was about to change.

Ahmad Babangida was always sort of a rebel. The first-born son of an ambassador, he had lived a textured life, but he was always one to forge his own path. When he serendipitously meets the daughter of a close family friend, he finds himself swept away by something powerful and indescribable.

At first tentative and subtle, the attraction between Fa’iza and Ahmad soon becomes consuming. They find themselves navigating the complicated web of culture and customs, haram and hadith, in order to find a sacred spot for the love they feel for each other to flourish. And just when it seems like they have succeeded, an unforeseen incident from their past brings everything they believe in, and have built, to the precipice of ruin.

Broken is a beautifully rendered contemporary novel about the boundaries between romance and sin, about self-discovery and faith, and about the bounds that true love will go to for a happily ever after.