Lola Akande's The City in the African Novel: A Thematic Rendering of Urban Spaces undertakes a critical analysis of sixteen African novels that she believes are representative of city trends. Beginning with an introduction that discusses why and how the city is an important phenomenon in literature, the problematic relationship between the city and the African novel, she goes on to examine how the African city emerges from villagisation into urbanity. Her careful and definitive analyses of the general and peculiar traits of African cities; the real impact of urban life on city dwellers; how earlier and recent novelists portray the city; how literature influences the way people conduct themselves in the city while the behaviour of people in the city also influences what comes out as literature are done against the background of the symbolisation of the African city as emblematic of the inchoate African modernities where citizens' lives are wracked with fruitless struggle. She then focuses on the contributions of female writers to the study of the city by critically assessing the extent to which city life has influenced female writers differently from their male counterparts.