Malta famously has a couple of books set in and around Paceville, but these were written one or two decades ago. Most of the more recent young adult Maltese fiction, incuding Ivan Bugeja’s debut, tackles other issues, dimensions and locations, not the nightlife hub of the island.

Weekends. Clubbing. Paceville. St Julian’s. Late night barbecues on the beach. Girls. Boys. Will he/won’t he? Will she/won’t she? These are staples of teenage weekend life in Malta, whatever the period, but the landscape, norms and realities for the 90s are very different from those of 2012.

Ivan Bugeja’s debut young adult novel – aptly called Gimgha, Sibt u Hadd (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) – is a fresh, modern-day take on teenagers and leisure. Set in one specific weekend, we follow a group of teenagers – chiefly Oliver, Ruth, Mark and Isabelle – as what started off as a typical weekend changes, for some of them, into a life-changing three days. It all starts off with Paceville, nightclubs, drinking, chatting up girls, gossip and barbecues. The story then takes a more dramatic turn with one of those sudden events that change one’s life completely, irrevocably.

And just when you think the weekend – and the novel – is over, you find a ‘bonus’ chapter at the end which happens three and a half months after the story’s weekend.

Gimgha, Sibt u Hadd successfully mixes the lighter, flirty, carefree side of clubbing and warm summer nights, with darker elements including brushes with the law and the nostalgia of lost youth as the paths of young and older generations cross.

In the words of a blogger who read the book immediately on publication, Gimgha, Sibt u Hadd is a read for anyone who is, or has been, a teenager in Malta. Bugeja’s writing has earned him plaudits for the sharp, insightful way in which he mirrors teenagers’ lingo, behaviour and brings out brilliantly the ennui that teenage weekends in Malta can induce.

Short snappy chapters – each marked with a particular time of day (17:30, 18:45, 19:45 and so on) – make it an ideal summer read, and the well-rounded characters will have most readers identifying with some of them, or at the very least comparing them to some of their friends. Frequent use of the present tense, and the hour-by-hour structure of the novel, keeps the story fast and the reading enjoyable.

The book won Bugeja first prize in the Teenage Literature Awards, held under the auspices of the National Book Council, the Parliamentary Secretariat for Youth and Agenzija Zghazagh.

Published this year by Merlin Publishers, it stands out visually also for its conceptual design, both on the cover and in the playful touches introduced by the author and the designer within the pages of the story. In the words of Merlin art director Pierre Portelli: “The novel is narrated throughout in concise snapshots, each chapter zooming in on a specific hour of the weekend, and the snapshots concept of the cover art is a visual translation of this. The blurry nightclub feel of the cover is very much in sync with the nightclubs atmosphere that permeates through the novel – the overall whiteness effect giving the hallucinatory mood.”

 Gimgha, Sibt u Hadd is available from all bookshops, and from www.merlinpublishers.com