Humanitatis Theoreticus Journal, Vol. 1(1) (2018) 123 The City Space, Marriage and Female Friendship in Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come James Otoburu Okpiliya Department of English & Literary Studies University of Calabar Anthony Ebebe Eyang Department of English & Literary Studies University of Calabar And Steve Ushie Omagu General Studies Department Kwararafa University Wukari’ Abstract The paper interrogates human interaction in the 21 st century city space of Lagos. Using setting to reflect, broaden and foreground emergent sensibilities of the city, the paper shows how this nuanced responsiveness influences the discourse of marriage, family, friendship, gender and identity in the novel. It argues that unlike previous uncomplimentary portrayals of the female in urban literary settings by many a male novelist, Atta rather changes the narrative and dwells on the fertile and reconstructed perspectives of the female. The paper captures some key socio-political and economic sensibilities as well as portrays of old and new varieties of city marriages. It insists that the city is a hotbed for female self-repositioning and personal progress as well as demonstrates that marriage in city space shackles yet uplifts the female. It explores a collage of healthy female bonding that influences and acts as a balm in soothing some harrowing experiences of city marriages. The paper concludes by showing how Atta foregrounds feminine dynamism and individualism in city marriage spaces. Keywords: City Space, Sefi Atta, Nigerian Literature, Gender, Marriage and Female Friendship Introduction: One of the topical issues of modernist and post-modernist literature is the city space. Michel Foucault once predicted that, “The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space” (22). Space has always been present but as a concept it abounds with newness. City literature or urban literature, as it applies to fiction, simply connotes creative writing within a generous city setting with characters whose images evolve from their city experiences. Several authors have demonstrated the dynamic nature of the city. William Shakespeare in Coriolanus claims, “What is the citie, but the people? True, the people are the citie” (Act 3, Sc. 1). Our daily lives, our experiences, culture and languages are controlled by categories of space we intersect over time and these Sefi Atta captures robustly in her novel, Everything Good Will Come (2005). She acknowledges the significance of symbolic and literary representation of the city space by replicating or historicizing innumerable guises of human sensibilities.