This paves the way for the author to explore wealth disparity and how much emphasis is put on a family's standing within the wider community. Medie brings this West African nation's rich and complex culture to life on the page, showing the contrast between the traditional customs still upheld by many (particularly in more rural areas) and the increasingly cosmopolitan way of life spreading throughout the capital.

Without ever adopting a judgmental tone, Medie highlights the ways in which the practice of locking women into moral contracts without proper legal protection or reciprocal opportunities upholds patriarchal structures, enforcing longstanding division between genders and classes. Men having multiple wives in a non-legal capacity is commonplace, so Eli believes himself to be free to continue pursuing relationships elsewhere and thinks that Afi should accept this without question. Afi and Eli's traditional wedding is recognized by their community but it is not legally binding in the same way a modern ceremony would be.

There is clear critique here of the widespread practice of unofficial polygamy in Ghana.

It also emphasizes that the contention between her and Afi is born wholly from the influence of others, and not through any fault of their own. It allows her, the rival who is never seen but whose presence is always felt, to remain as elusive to the reader as she is to Afi. This 'other woman' lingers on the periphery for almost the entire novel, and I thought this was a very clever narrative decision. It soon becomes clear that Afi's husband Eli is already in love with someone else, a woman his family disapproves of, and that his family has set up his marriage to Afi to lure him away from her. Afi is whisked from her small town and placed in a luxury apartment in the capital of Accra. Addictive melodrama reminiscent of a soap opera masks incisive commentary on finding independence, the pitfalls of polygamy and the reality of Ghanaian class divides in this hugely readable debut novel.Ģ1-year-old Afi is a talented Ghanaian seamstress eager to study fashion design, but her life is upturned when her mother agrees to an arranged marriage with a virtual stranger, the son of a wealthy local businesswoman, on her behalf.

His only wife reviews