Writer's block
If we all agree that we are a very literate nation, then why haven't more of our distinguished writers been recognised further afield? True we have more than our share of decent novelists, playwrights, poets etc... but woefully few with an...
If we all agree that we are a very literate nation, then why haven't more of our distinguished writers been recognised further afield? True we have more than our share of decent novelists, playwrights, poets etc... but woefully few with an international reputation.
Writers like our national poet Dun Karm, novelist and playwright Francis Ebejer, folklorist Ninu Cremona, poet Oliver Friggieri and dramatist Oreste Calleja, have all left lasting impressions within the Maltese Islands, but have made few waves outside. Francis Ebejer was once heard to remark that we do not value our men of letters in the same way that we do our lawyers and businessmen. That may well be true, but it still doesn't explain the dearth of Maltese writers in the international A... or even B list.
But there is hope: In recent years the only name that stands out is Trezza Azzopardi - and she's only half Maltese. The daughter of a Gozitan father and a Welsh mother, she was born in 1961 in Cardiff, South Wales. In the year 2000 she attained a considerable first for any writer, when her first novel The Hiding Place was short-listed for the Booker Prize.
So, in the absence of any purebred Maltese superstar writer, we should embrace the highly successful Ms Azzopardi as indeed one of our own.
Writers like our national poet Dun Karm, novelist and playwright Francis Ebejer, folklorist Ninu Cremona, poet Oliver Friggieri and dramatist Oreste Calleja, have all left lasting impressions within the Maltese Islands, but have made few waves outside. Francis Ebejer was once heard to remark that we do not value our men of letters in the same way that we do our lawyers and businessmen. That may well be true, but it still doesn't explain the dearth of Maltese writers in the international A... or even B list.
But there is hope: In recent years the only name that stands out is Trezza Azzopardi - and she's only half Maltese. The daughter of a Gozitan father and a Welsh mother, she was born in 1961 in Cardiff, South Wales. In the year 2000 she attained a considerable first for any writer, when her first novel The Hiding Place was short-listed for the Booker Prize.
So, in the absence of any purebred Maltese superstar writer, we should embrace the highly successful Ms Azzopardi as indeed one of our own.