Future African Classics! His Only Wife – a captivating debut about defying expectations

In the run-up to Africa Day, on 25 May, Jonathan Ball Publishers will be sharing some of the sparkling new books from their 2021 Pan-African list.

We’re calling these Future African Classics – the books you’ll want on your shelves today, and for future generations.

Today, find out more about His Only Wife, the witty, smart and moving debut novel from Ghanaian author Peace Adzo Medie!

See the full list of Future African Classics here!

‘Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.’

Bursting with warmth and humour, His Only Wife is a comedy-of-manners about the search for independence, and the rules that might have to be broken along the way.

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 fairytale 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.

‘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.’ – New York Times

‘A hilarious, page-turning, sharply realised portrait of modern womanhood in the most infuriating of circumstances. A gem of a debut.’ – Wayetu Moore, author of She Would Be King

About the author

Peace Adzo Medie is a Ghanaian writer and Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. The author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020), 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.