Mikiel Borg has a small grocer shop in the village. He is highly opinionated and daily holds court while serving his regular clientele. One day, he lands in hot water after one of his regulars is caught leaving the shop without having been issued with a VAT receipt. The situation escalates, and Mikiel has the book thrown at him.

The disproportionality of the punishment he receives with his minor offence triggers something deep inside him, the injustice of a system that rolls over the small fry. He decides to do something about it and, modelling himself on his hero, Peter the Great of Russia, he decides to run for election on a monarchic ticket, aiming to become King and the champion of the little guy, thus challenging his own opening statement, “iż-żgħir jibqa’ ż-żgħir u ebd’Alla mhu se jidħol għalih.”

This sets the scene for what is to follow, a rollercoaster campaign in which we are brought face-to-face with characters and events that are somehow recognisable, some even more than others. Verbal caricature abounds, with greasy lawyers, behind-the scenes manipulators, public relations wizards and the inevitable politicians.

As the small-town grocer, with his soapbox pick-up truck, finds his message being amplified by social media, an ever-growing number of people start following him making him a credible threat to the hidden hands that run the country. Although his message is simplistic and in reality, says nothing that has not been said before, the masses see his promise of a monarchy as the solution to rid themselves of the political system has become rotten to the core.

Events spiral leading to the lowering of the curtain on a tale that has all the characteristics of an allegory, spiced with a heavy dose of satire, and very thinly- veiled (if at all) references and quotations from the real political and social situation on the Maltese Islands.

Ir-Re Borg sees Aleks Farrugia moving away from the style of his previous works such as Camerata, a political thriller in pre-war Malta, and Għall-Glorja tal-Patrija!, a history of Malta in parody,  the style of which was probably inspired by Mel Brooks’s comic cinematic masterpiece, History of the World, Part I.

Every page of the book points at the ever-widening gap between Farrugia’s vision and ideals for society and the reality that bites

Yet the incisive wit, and the ability to see the world we live in, without blinkers and through a lens that has no hue to prevent him seeing and saying it as it is, are evident in every page. The narration uses a stepping-stone technique, with no words wasted on bridging gaps, thus having readers jumping from one episode to another. The imagery and metaphors are nothing if not Orwellian, with the depiction of a Malta that is fast becoming more and more dystopian.

It is left up to the reader to join the dots, and there are enough of them for the overall picture to come out very clearly. Written in a simple language that avoids bombasticity and is easy to follow, it does not require much effort for the reader to identify the real-life doppelgangers of the fictional characters, and developments that practically mirror the real Maltese social and political environment. 

This is not just a novel, or a book to be read for a quick laugh. It is a statement made by a verbal artist who brings to its pages a very strong autobiographical undercurrent – his blue-collar family background, academic studies in the philosophy of politics and communications, and the journalistic and political experience – all bound together against the backdrop of his strong moralistic and ethical outlook on Maltese society. Besides Farrugia’s personal statement, Ir-Re Borg is also a cry for help for a Maltese society that, in the name of so-called progress, has lost much of what characterised it in the past.

Every page of the book points at the ever-widening gap between Farrugia’s vision and ideals for society and the reality that bites. As the narration comes to the last page, we find that the end does not justify the means, but rather that the means led to the end.

I look forward to the next works from this young(ish) author, whose literary maturity curve is getting steeper as time goes by.