The thesis examines some of the short and long fiction set in Johannesburg, which is published between approximately 1980 and 2003. The thesis examines how the residents viewed themselves, and evaluates the various social and political struggles and strategies that were employed in an attempt to belong, imagine the city differently and establish strategic identities that would enable them to live a better life during the focused quarter of a century of experiences in an ever-changing fictive Johannesburg. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.