This module explores the variety of approaches to the business of making literature in the circumstances of contemporary Africa that the continent's writers have evolved in the last two decades. We will look, for example, at writers' responses to late and post-apartheid South Africa, examine the so-called 'magical realist' strategies of some West African authors and consider the debates around the emegence of a distinctive 'African women's literature'. The problems of constructing adequate and appropriate critical tools for the discussion of such work will be considered.