Bellilote u l-Bjar ta’ Napuljun

by Charles Xuereb

Klabb Kotba Maltin, 2024

As the title and subtitle of this novel attest, the author’s emphasis is on history. But let’s be honest: we didn’t need a novel to find out that Charles Xuereb is fascinated by history, especially the history of our country.

We’re also, by now, familiar with his interest in how and why historical accounts can reach us in a distorted manner − we certainly know how much this malady motivates him to persist in his research, writing and publishing of articles and papers.

And yes, whether you agree with him or not, we all recognise that thanks to scholars like Xuereb, the public is becoming increasingly knowledgeable of history’s covert ability to sanctify, to demonise, and to select for us what to remember and what to forget.

His fascination with history inspired him to produce this time a literary work, a novel.

Xuereb, the historian, the researcher, the broadcaster, rewarded us with a novel, a work of fiction, with an ingenious plot that intertwines the real with the unreal.

Certainly, he is not the first Maltese author to do this − the genre of the historical novel in the local literary context has existed for quite a while; one can say that this was the main narrative form of our country towards the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, with Anton Manuel Caruana, Agostino Levanzin, Ġużè Muscat Azzopardi, Ġużè Galea and Ġużè Aquilina among the pioneering novelists.

But one wonders if this literary novel could easily fit effortlessly in this genre. Very often, literary scholars, feel this need – it is almost an obsession – to pigeonhole each written piece in a particular literary compartment. I believe that this novel could not be just classified as a historical one.

Maybe, after all, there is no need to box it in a particular cubicle. Xuereb describes his own novel as ‘a modern story with a historical background’.

When one reads this novel, one appreciates the alternation, wisely planned by the author, to move serenely from past to present, from what really happened to imagination, from archival material to fiction. And here, several pertinent questions arise: What is the function that concedes this type of literature?  Is it a relevant medium? Is it effective? Is fiction a valuable tool for the historian?

Among the ingredients which Xuereb employs in the build-up of the novel, the love triangle stands out, snaring Marin, the protagonist, and the two young ladies between whom he finds himself: Maxine, his French girlfriend that accompanies him on a cruise to Malta, and Josephine, the Maltese guide with whom he bonds robustly.

This novel, though it often visits the past, somehow manages to look to the future

The characterisation and the plot of this novel offer ample evidence to show how literature succeeds to transform real, present perspectives of the author’s psyche into an imaginary and autonomous world inhabited by fictitious characters immersed in their conflicts.  

So, I feel that Bellilote u l-Bjar ta’ Napuljun is an efficacious experiment: the raw material that Xuereb the researcher discovered has been processed and enriched by the fertile imaginary of Xuereb the novelist until it finally landed in the readers’ hands, informing and entertaining them. Marin’s didactic voice reminds us of the author’s enthusiasm who, as a media person, feels obliged to impart education and culture, enlightening those who are not aware of what happened before they were born.

Throughout the story, the omniscient, omnipresent, unveiled narrator – as sometimes he speaks directly to the reader – takes every opportunity to recount the history of visited places, the pertinence or irrelevance of every monument that is mentioned, the etymology of place names, the migration of our forefathers around the Mediterranean coast, different people’s customs, and all kinds of other cultural aspects.

The story commences in Żebbuġ in 1798 with the historical assassination of Stanislas Losthe, one of the first Maltese mayors, of French origin, who sympathised with the Republican French-appointed government, and then takes us on a marathon trip to different countries of the epoch.

Marin and Gaspard also experience a terrorist attack in Marseilles, in which they get heavily involved. Back to Malta today, we cannot overlook the witty remarks on ‘cranes and concrete buildings’, on ‘noise and traffic’, mostly caused by overpopulation.

I am not sure how aware was the author of certain choices he took in this regard while processing characterisations during the writing of this novel.

This brings me to my last reflection. The majority of his protagonists are young people – an option that I interpret as a suggestion: the author’s hope for the future seems to rest squarely on the young generation that appears to be still finding its feet when it comes to constructing critical thinking and the re-learning of what they seem to have missed in their education.

In my opinion, this novel, though it often visits the past, somehow manages to look to the future, when hopefully the appreciation of history would be considered as one of the most prime resources in the holistic development of the nation.