San Serriffe is a fictional island nation created for April Fools' Day, 1977, by Britain's Guardian newspaper.[1] An elaborate description of the nation, using puns and plays on words relating to typography (such as "sans serif"), was reported as legitimate news, apparently fooling many readers. Knowledge of typography has since spread through widespread use of computers, and so the jokes are much more likely to be spotted today.
The hoax appeared in The Guardian on April 1, 1977. A seven-page supplement was published in the style of contemporary reviews of foreign countries, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the island's independence, complete with themed advertisements from major companies. The island was reused for similar hoaxes in 1978, 1980 and 1999. On April Fools' Day 2009 the geography, history and culture of San Serriffe featured heavily in the paper's cryptic crossword.
The original idea was to place it in the Atlantic Ocean near Tenerife, but because of the ground collision of two Boeing 747s there a few days before publication it was moved to the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles Islands.
San Serriffe was one of the most famous and successful hoaxes of recent decades; it has become part of the common cultural heritage of literary humour, and a secondary body of literature has been derived from it.
Professor Donald Knuth of Stanford University presents reward cheques for small denominations to readers who find errors in his textbooks, but because of problems with fraud, as of 2008 they have been drawn on the Bank of San Serriffe.
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The idea for the hoax came from the Guardian's advertising representative Philip Davies. In a 2007 interview he said "The Financial Times was always doing special reports on little countries I'd never heard of. I was thinking about April Fool's Day 1977 and I thought, why don't we just make a country up?"[2] Special Reports editor Stuart St Clair Legge suggested the name San Serriffe. Geoffrey Taylor designed the semicolon-shaped map of the island, based on a shrunken version of New Zealand.
Initially, the supplement featuring the fictitious archipelago was to be a single page, but the newspaper realized that a larger, more in depth review would generate greater revenue in the form of advertising.[1]
San Serriffe is an island nation in the southern oceans. Owing to a peculiarity of ocean currents and erosion, its exact position varies. A recent report locating it in the Bering Sea was presumably an error. On April 1, 2006 The Guardian reported that San Serriffe was then just off New Zealand's South Island, but if the rate of movement really is 1.4 km per year as published, San Serriffe should stay in the Indian Ocean for several millennia.
San Serriffe is an archipelago consisting of two main islands and a number of smaller ones. Of the larger islands, the more northerly (the Caissa Superiore or Upper Caisse) is roughly round and the more southerly (the Caissa Inferiore or Lower Caisse) round but with a promontory extending south-westwards from the south-east, at Thirty Point. The two major islands are separated by the Shoals of Adze, dominated by Cap Em. A major inland feature is a swamp, the Woj of Type.
| Fictitious Railways of San Serriffe (as surveyed, 1977) |
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Legend
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The capital, Bodoni, is in the centre of the Caissa Superiore, and is served by an international airport. It is linked by fast highways to the major ports, including Port Clarendon and Port Elrod, which both provide ample commercial shipping facilities.
Upper Caisse in particular is well served by a network of railway lines serving Bodoni, the airport and the major coastal towns, including the phosphate mining and processing region in the north east. The main line, built by the Great North Bodoni Railway Company, had its own golf club, at Port Baskerville.
A ferry connects Adze on the south coast of the northern island to Cap Em on the north coast of the southern island and there were plans to build a west coastal line as far as Gill Cameo, but it is not known if this line was completed.
Possibly because of its reportedly remote and shifting location, the full history of San Serriffe has never been adequately told, but these basic details are known.
The native people of San Serriffe are known as the Flong. The dominant group are of European stock, the descendants of colonists, known as colons. There is also a large mixed-race group, known as semi-colons. In the last available census (1973), as reported in the April 1, 1977 Guardian, the population was 1,782,724, with approximately 640,000 colons and semi-colons; 574,000 Flongs; 271,000 Creoles; 117,000 Malaysians; 92,000 Arabs; and 88,000 persons of other ethnic groups.
For many years following independence in 1967, San Serriffe had an autocratic form of government under military strongman General Pica. Democratic elections were held in 1997, and the winner was the charismatic Antonio Bourgeois.
Among the cultural highlights are:
The relaxation of the islands' strict anti-pornography laws under the Bourgeois government has led to the publication of a series of risqué novels by Serriffean journalists, collectively referred to as the "Times Nude Romances".
The bitter-sweet swarfega is prepared in various ways to create unique Serriffean dishes. Because of this, the local cuisine lacks the oily character of some related styles.
The national bird of San Serriffe is the kwote, a member of the guillemot (guillemets) family.
San Serriffe has made little impression on the international sporting world, apart from their defeat of England at football in 1999. The application of the national Rugby Union team, the Kwotes, to participate in the Rugby Union World Cup 1991 was rejected by a Twickenham official on the grounds that "we don't have any four-figure scoreboards, old boy." The islands' annual endurance challenge race, involving running, mountain biking and windsurfing from Cap Em to the German immigrant village of Ems in the Caissa Inferiore (popularly known as the Two Em Dash), now attracts international participants, and it has been some years since it was won by a Serriffean athlete.
In October 2008 Donald Knuth established the Bank of San Serriffe (in Thirty Point, Caissa Inferiore, San Serriffe),[3] which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus.[4] He opened an account for anyone who received a cheque from him as a reward for discovering errors in his books.