Paper short abstract:

African short stories in the recent years have often generated a reading site that references the tension between the city and rural settings.

Paper long abstract:

African short stories in recent years have often generated a reading site that references the tension between the city and rural settings. The tension is palpably illustrated in some selected short stories in Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes (Eds.) anthology, African Short Stories(1985). The varied stories embedded in the anthology are drawn from the West, East, North and South African sub-regions. Thematically, the stories are inward-looking, showing the entire Africa as being enmeshed in value(s) contradiction. While the rural dwellers continually contend with inherent social lack whose aftermath derives from dwindling economies, absence of the basic infrastructure, city dwellers constantly face the problems of congestion, loss of identity and cultural decay. The paper's overarching focus is on this double-edged socio-cultural relationship of lack and anonymity which foregrounds the contradiction imbedded in the narratives of African short stories. The narratives in the anthology are concerned with two intents: to juxtapose the signification of alluring cultural ambience of the rural dwelling in contradiction with the rising frustration emanating from the decadence as a corollary of city dwelling.