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Abstract
As a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the romance genre in Africa plays a series of important functions. Whereas in the West, romance is often seen as a formulaic genre that has run its course, in Africa, it is used to explore a range of pressing social issues. Romantic fiction offers advice and suggests solutions and hence makes legible contemporary ideas on gender and romance. However, thus far, the body of scholarship on romance has tended to focus largely on the female protagonists who dominate the genre. By examining the figure of the sugar daddy, we can widen the boundaries of investigation. This article investigates these ideas in relation to a reading of a popular Kenyan novel, Sugar Daddy's Lover.