Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to investigate how Lagos as a social, cultural and economic space has evolved in the imagination of Nigerian short story writers from a romanticized and desirable environment to a demonized destination.

Paper long abstract:

The relocation of the site of fictional recreation from the rural and traditional society to the modern and urban space has been a major development in Nigerian writing. This has led to privileging the metropolitan condition, facilitating the projection of a national identity in postcolonial Nigerian fiction in the process. But there have not been many efforts at exploring the urban space in Nigerian short fiction.

As an intervention in this regard, this paper seeks to investigate how Lagos as a social, cultural and economic space has evolved in the imagination of Nigerian short story writers from a romanticized and desirable environment to a demonized destination. The paper will explore representations of Lagos and its inhabitants in Cyprian Ekwensi's Restless City and Christmas Gold with Other Stories and Karen King- Aribisala's Our Wife and Other Stories, works by a Nigerian and a non-Nigerian respectively-- which were published about five decades apart-- to demonstrate how authorial vision and the changing fortunes of Nigeria's economic capital have collaborated in redefining her in Nigerian short fiction.