A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Johannesburg 2017 / This research report uses In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika to demonstrate that African romance fiction is not necessarily escapist fantasy. It does this by focusing on the exploration of gender, racism, national and cultural identity in the post-colonial era in this novel that uses the romance template. The close textual analysis that is at the core of this reading is guided by an eclectic theoretical framework made out of several notions, the most important of which are: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s idea of fiction as a form of language; the understanding that gender and race are socially constructed and can thus be remade or unmade; cosmopolitanism, and particularly the variety known as Afropolitanism. The research report is divided into five chapters. Chapter I, the introductory chapter, plots what the research report is about, explains how the research that led to the writing of the report was carried out, and locates the report in its appropriate intellectual contexts. Chapter II engages with the formal characteristics of In Dependence. Evidence is assembled to support the argument that in In Dependence Manyika creatively enhances the popular romance in the process forging a “fiction language” that she uses to communicate significant social and political messages in a rhetorically powerful manner. Chapter III analyzes the manner in which Manyika uses an inter-racial heterosexual relationship in the novel to explore gender and racism. The key argument pursued in the chapter is that in In Dependence Manyika challenges racialized patriarchal ideologies and envisions a cosmopolitan world in which the genders interact in a humane and fair manner. Chapter IV demonstrates that the story of an interracial romantic relationship that is used to structure the novel problematizes cultural identities and their attendant prejudices such as sexism and racism, and ultimately raises cosmopolitanism as the solution to the problem of intercultural interaction. Chapter V is the Conclusion. The arguments and conclusions of the core chapters of the research report – Chapter II, Chapter III and Chapter IV – are rehashed here. Also stated in this final chapter are the reading’s general conclusions on the novel and its contribution to the romance genre in the broader context of African literature. / MT 2018