The Development and Scholarship of Eswatini Fiction: A Narrative Overview Review of Literature

ESwatini’s fiction, whether written in siSwati language or English, remains at the fringes of scholarly research. Thus, this paper draws a spotlight on the fiction of emaSwati. It aims to describe the historical development of eSwatini fiction and review scholarly studies conducted on the fiction to highlight extant research gaps. Notably, there is an absence of research that addresses the emergence and scholarship of eSwatini fiction simultaneously. The study employs a narrative overview review method and a thematic structure to review online and hardcopy sources such as books, journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, book reviews, and newspaper articles. The findings indicate that an exiguous amount of scholarship has occurred on siSwati fiction and that, currently, the production of eSwatini fiction is at a snail’s pace. We recommend that more scholars investigate the production, publishing, and translation of the fiction to position it within international academia and expose the world to eSwatini’s literary gems.