Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Serial fiction

A journalistic tradition that can be traced back to the days of Dickens, serial fiction has become steadily less prevalent in newspapers during the latter half of the 20th century, arguably due to television, radio, and other electronic media displacing newspapers as a primary source for information and entertainment.

But Serial Fiction remains popular in many newspapers on the continent eg in Tanzania Swahili tabloids such as Uwazi (Transparency), Ijumaa (Friday), Ijumaa Wikienda (Friday Weekender), Risasi (Bullet), Amani (Peace) and Championi (Champion), have one page out of twelve dedicated to serial fiction. Next in Nigeria also recently began to regularly feature fiction on its pages.

One installment of a serial fiction for the Chimurenga Chronicle?

1 comment:

  1. Interesting reading on Tanzania's serial serial fiction writer and publisher, Eric
    James Shigongo, here:

    http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/SwaFo/SF_15_04_Reuster-Jahn.pdf

    "From the start, Shigongo’s novels were part and parcel of Global Publishers’ newspapers. In every issue he has a page out of twelve dedicated to one of his serials. This means that he publishes five different novels at a time, which, as is rather common for newspaper serials, all are long stories often reaching sixty sequels and more."

    On a serial for the Chronic, Zakes springs to mind after his wonderfully pop last crime novel?

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