Afi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. Smart and pretty, she has also been convinced by her mother to marry a man she doesn’t know: a wealthy businessman named Elikem. His family has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from a current relationship they disapprove of. When Afi is moved from her small hometown to live in Accra, Ghana’s gleaming capital full of wealth and sophistication, she is not prepared for the way her life will change. But she has agreed to this marriage in order to give her mother the financial security she desperately needs, and so Afi must see it through. Or must she?

A witty, moving, and smart debut novel, His Only Wife takes place in a world of men who want their wives to be beautiful, to be good cooks and mothers, to grant their husbands forbearance. And in Afi, we meet a delightful, brave, and relatable heroine who just may break all the rules.

The Author

Peace Adzo Medie is a Ghanaian writer and senior lecturer in gender and international politics at the University of Bristol in England. Prior to that she was a research fellow at the University of Ghana. She has published several short stories, and her book Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She is an award-winning scholar and has been awarded several fellowships. She holds a PhD in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in geography from the University of Ghana. She was born in Liberia.