This article discusses what the authors call an emerging Afropolitan aesthetics. Through an exploration of recurring stylistic features, the article focuses particularly on the trope of a mobility-induced anxiety that entwines place and self. The ontological and affective troping of return and of self-understanding and the contemporary signification of Africa as a complex place of relocation and reconnection are explored in discussions of literary characters in Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013), Yvonne Owuor’s Dust (2014), Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference (2013) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013).