Description
A young Ghanian woman embarks on a less than perfect marriage in Medie’s exquisitely witty and psychologically acute debut about staying true to yourself when the world won’t stop making impossible demands.
Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.
Afi Tekple is a young seamstress living in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother. Afi’s future doesn’t seem to hold much excitement. Until, that is, she is offered a life-changing opportunity – a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo.
She barely knows Elikem, but that seems a small price to pay for a marriage that could offer her family financial security, as well as the key to the glitzy city lifestyle she’s always wanted. But when Afi arrives in Accra, she realises that her fairy-tale ending might not be all that she’d hoped for. Now she must balance the often conflicting roles of wife, daughter, niece and sister-in-law, without losing sight of herself.
Bursting with warmth and humour, His Only Wife is a witty, smart and moving comedy-of-manners about the search for independence, and the rules that might have to be broken along the way.
‘I love this book so much I turned the pages so fast… It’s all about the search for independence and being true to yourself and who you really are.’ – Reese Witherspoon
‘Mesmerising… This is not a book to read with one eye on a beach volleyball tournament; it’s a story to soak up in silence, on a long, cloudy afternoon when you have time to think.’ – The New York Times
