Books
The Wolf at Number 4
- Publisher
- Ohio University Press
- Series
- Modern African Writing
- Genre
- Literary / Gothic
- Setting
- Cape Coast, Ghana
- Published
- 2018
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, even as their mutual understanding both precipitates and reinforces the downfall of each. Before long, their struggles to exist in a world that dehumanizes and then throws the first stone whip up a perfect storm, with deadly consequences.
Debut novelist Ayo Tamakloe-Garr drew inspiration from works such as A Streetcar Named Desire and Frankenstein to create The Wolf at Number 4, a story set in 1990s Ghana. The result is a chilling and funny gothic tale that will disarm readers even as it forces them to confront whether the wolves around us are born or made.
"As I fumbled with my keys he said to me, 'They kill the person to save the woman.'"
Praise
"…manages to present dark material sincerely but also with a great deal of humor."
"…blending the familiar with the unexpected."
"The Wolf at Number Four is dark, bold, and shocking."
"…a blend of humour and unsettling Gothic darkness."
"…the events rise to a gripping, inevitable, crescendo."
Press & interviews
Course reading: Rice University — History of Modern Africa (HIST 223)
Assigned as one of four required texts in Dr. Daniel Domingues's HIST 223 seminar, closing out the course's unit on Africa since independence with a week-long class discussion of the novel. Taught in Spring 2021 and again in Spring 2023.
Interview: Flash Fiction Ghana
On imposter syndrome, letting go of what "African literature" was supposed to sound like, and why Desire and Wolf had to happen to each other.
Read the interviewFeature: The Republic — "7 Books That Will Send Chills Down Your Spine"
The Wolf at Number 4 named alongside Marlon James, Helen Oyeyemi, and Michelle Paver in a roundup of African and international fiction built for readers who love a gothic chill.
Read the featureReading list: Brittle Paper — "What Jeanne-Marie Jackson is Reading"
Africanist scholar Jeanne-Marie Jackson (Johns Hopkins) discusses the novel's unflinching approach to codes of silence around women's sexuality, and its skillful bend of the gothic form toward Cape Coast's atmosphere.
Read the pieceInterview: Brittle Paper — Jeanne-Marie Jackson-Awotwi
In a wide-ranging conversation on the contemporary African novel, Jackson-Awotwi points to The Wolf at Number 4 as an example of Ghanaian fiction willing to confront incendiary gender themes head-on.
Read the interview