Desire Mensah, a disgraced schoolteacher in her thirties, sees moving to sleepy little Cape Coast, Ghana, as her chance to get away from a shameful secret not buried deeply enough. And maybe, just maybe, she will find the love she craves and the husband her mother craves for her. But in Cape Coast, the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past. That’s the kind of thing Wolfgang “Wolf” Ofori would say. Everyone says the eleven-year-old is a genius—eccentric though he is—and is bound to win Wonderkids, a quiz competition ordinarily for high school students. Wolf and Desire form a strange friendship, e... continue
Esi decides to divorce after enduring yet another morning's marital rape. Though her friends and family remain baffled by her decision (after all, he doesn't beat her ), Esi holds fast. When she falls in love with a married man--wealthy, and able to arrange a polygamous marriage--the modern woman finds herself trapped in a new set of problems. Witty and compelling, Aidoo's novel, "inaugurates a new realist style in African literature."