New Salv Sammut novel delves into the diverse mysteries of life

Id-Dar tad-Dellijiet  

by Salv Sammut

published by Horizons, 2024

It is an undisputable fact that every artist, author, painter, sculptor, poet and writer leaves in everything he creates the mark of his times, of the environment around him and particularly that of his own feelings and his character, and also particularly how these last ones occur around him, and the ultimate effects they have on his life.

Every human sentiment conceives in human beings various views of the stage on which he has to live all his life, surrounded by beauty and not so beautiful things, with joy and sadness, with the hopes and dreams that will eventually lead him on to the inevitable end.

Meanwhile, the years and experiences then intensify art in the artist, and the more experiences he goes through in his life, the more his artistic force intensifies and gathers momentum in his quest to create works that generally surpass and excel in artistry the previous ones.

This mainly applies to the writer. No need to mention the greatest of authors of all time, many of whom have built a monument to themselves after their death, thanks to the masterpieces created during their lifetime.

Not even the present authors, living a much different life from those of yesteryear, in a chaotic world, sick, infected, riddled with wars, misery and mishaps that have reached dangerous levels, morally, spiritually and physically.

And this induces the writer to air his feelings with more desperately keen power, always hoping that his voice will ultimately be heard; that certain global, environmental, climatic and moral damage (already done) will hopefully stop in time before it will be too late.

One of the Maltese authors whom I regard as an intensely preoccupied novel writer is undoubtedly Salv Sammut who, being also a poet of mettle, normally builds his novels on a poetic basis, something which further sharpens and ironically enhances the stories he creates.

And being a poet, Sammut intensifies his own sensitivity, gets angry and loathes all that induces mankind to wallow in mud, disgrace and sufferance; he despises egoism, intolerance, greed, prejudice and physical and emotional cruelty, all of which can make man’s life on earth a sheer hell.

His narrative is spread in a superb literary style

In all his novels, Sammut is brilliant in this aspect, particularly in his novels Id-Dar ta’ ħdejn il-baħar, L-Altruwista and Sister Clara. He enhances the reality of his stories with subtle but emphatic, convincing and severe morals, after letting the reader taste the tragic bitterness of human frailty. And this is further embellished with off the cuff dialogue and realistic incidents on a live, credible and true to life background.

And now we have in hand his latest novel Id-Dar tad-Dellijiet, in which and with which he stresses on the diverse mysteries of life, and how life can bring happiness, create a heaven on earth, but can also be painful, reduce one to misery and despair, be rough to a degree, and even kill.

A gripping story that evolves round a house eerily saturated in shadows. Photo: Shutterstock.com

This one is a gripping story that evolves round a house eerily saturated in shadows. What are its mysteries? What links the sea and the nearby wood? Why is the present so intrinsically linked with the past? Why a hapless clandestine love? What has the old man in the wood got to hide? What links all the other disoriented characters? Why do the imagined ghosts lurk in the disillusioned minds?

Once again, Sammut has spread his narrative in a superb literary  style, the poetic element forever adding to the beauty of the  emotional and dramatic moments which, besides embellishing the story itself, also bring to the fore the distinctive power of the Maltese novel which, like other Maltese literary works, is in no way inferior to foreign ones.