Award-winning author Immanuel Mifsud was the guest of honour at a well-attended literary evening organised by the Maltese Embassy in Brussels in collaboration with the Maltese translators at the General Secretariat of the Council. 

The event was held on Friday evening and sought to promote Maltese literature among the diaspora in Brussels. The Brussels diaspora is amongst the largest in Europe, due to the number of Maltese employed with EU institutions. 

Mifsud, renowned for winning the European Price for Literature with Fl-isem tal-Missier, read excerpts from his latest book Għażiż Ġismi, a collection of poems centred around the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating impacts on people’s everyday lives. The first part of the evening was dedicated to Mifsud’s writing about the pandemic experience, paying respect to the victims and commending the heroic efforts and great sacrifices made by all those involved in mitigating its effects on the population. 

Mifsud also took participants on a journey down memory lane triggered by the loneliness resulting from social distancing measures and the sustained lack of socialising which characterised the pandemic. The audience had the opportunity to reflect and reminisce about the concept of time, pleasant memories of times gone by and confinement.

Although the event was mainly targeted at the Maltese diaspora, it was also open to non-Maltese speakers, who were able to follow proceedings thanks to a translation of Mifsud’s work by American translator Ruth Ward. 

The literary evening was the final event of Mifsud’s visit to Brussels, where he delivered two lectures on the history of Maltese literature and on the motion of Maltese literature in the 20th century at the General Secretariat of the Council. 

This event is one of the initiatives being taken by the Embassy of Malta in Brussels to promote the Maltese language in Belgium and Luxembourg. In December of last year, the Embassy, with the support of the European School in Brussels, the National Literacy Agency and the National Book Council, inaugurated a library of books in the Maltese language for children, which is open to the public three times a week.