Alfred Sant’s latest book was launched at St James Music Room last month. Albert Marshall was in the chair and while Carmen Sammut and Aleks Farrugia gave their impressions of L-Ghalqa tal-Iskarjota the actors Ninette Micallef and Anthony Ellul presented extracts to the audience which was sizeable in spite of the fact that there was a very important football game being played that evening. Marie Benoît asked three personalities who have already read the book to comment
L-Ghalqa tal-Iskarjota is a fast-paced narrative that revolves around the production of a fictional popular television programme. In Alfred Sant’s book, the programme is deemed to be “a national institution … which, according to public perception, is not much less significant than Parliament or the Presidency” (p. 141). The producers needed a sensational story to boost their audience ratings and they embarked on an investigation of para-psychological events that unfold in an ancient hamlet inhabited by ghost-like figures.
Sant cleverly meshes present-day mysteries with spectres from the Punic era. Fictive personas meet historical figures in a story that weaves horror together with humour.
DR CARMEN SAMMUT
The story unfolds in an incestuous environment where people do not trust each other and yet they need to scratch each other’s backs to secure their ascendancy. On top of television producers, experts, state players and clergymen, rats are significant protagonists. Often, the rat is a symbol for traitors. In this account, these repulsive and dangerous creatures become part of the food chain of modern Maltese society.
Overall, L-Ghalqa tal-Iskarjota presents a very pessimistic outlook as it is a clan of conniving schemers who ultimately win. Truth is among the victims sacrificed in a final bloodbath.
It is very likely that readers will be tempted to interpret this narrative conditioned by their own perceptions of the author. Besides being a well-known author, Sant is a key political figure who stirs different feelings among the various readers. Yet, we should be wary when we attempt to explore authorial intent. While an author’s context, his life experiences, and his views are important, the French literary critic Roland Barthes warned that if we overemphasize these elements we would be narrowing down the possibilities of textual interpretation.
ALEKS FARRUGIA,
EDITOR ‘IT-TORCA’
The main focus of my intervention during the launch was that Alfred Sant managed – very well, in my opinion – to create an interesting and compelling narrative about our society; a society that in many ways is no longer able to narrate itself. Even though we are constantly exposed to the media, even the media itself has receded from giving us compelling stories about ourselves and instead is continuously giving us a narrative that has been overused again and again. Even Alfred Sant hints at this, so much so, that through the process of reading we become almost certain that the Kwiz Kwamm programme on the field will never be aired. The reason is simple: the programme (and therefore the media) will never be able to grasp the complexity of the story about the field. Sant manages to show the complexity of the narrative by presenting us with fluid characters that the moment we think we know something about them, something new happens that changes our perspective on who they are. By the end of the novel we feel that we don’t really know any of the characters in a way that we can define clearly who they are. Some people would term this style of writing as post modern. But I don’t really like that tag. Isn’t it within the nature of things that they change according to what’s happening around them? Rather than being influenced by post modernism, I feel Sant is more influenced by Proust.
JOYCE GUILLAUMIER
When I was asked to interview Alfred Sant during Faccati, my weekly programme on One TV, I asked the publishers for a copy of L-Ghalqa tal-Iskarjota, but alas this was not yet available. Instead I was given a synopsis which did not actually do it justice. However, having read Dr Sant’s other books, I could extract enough information from him to bring out its different character. Since then I have interviewed Dr Sant for a second time, this time for Campus FM, an interview which will go on air on 29 June, and by then I did have a copy of the book which I read in two sessions.
As I had gathered from the first interview, this book is completely different from anything Dr Sant had written before because it ventures into the realms of the horror story. Yet humour is never far away. And thereby hangs the tale! Can a horror story be also humourous? Not hilariously so, but humourous all the same, with a satirical undercurrent which however sometimes surfaces very prominently.
I had no doubt about Dr Sant’s abilities as an author. He can spin a story which grips, linking the past with the present and using contemporary situations to make it relevant to present day readers. This time we are transported into the media world which however intermingles with a horrendous past. I will not give the game away and I will not deprive the reader of discovering for him/herself its many intrigues and subterfuges, but I will only say that the title of the book refers to a field on the outskirts of a lost village where previously an unfortunate man hanged himself after portraying Guda l-Iskarjota during the Good Friday procession.
As I said before, the story is woven with skill and attention to detail, but the most intriguing factor about this book for me is not the story itself, but the question which arises from it, that is: can horror be humourous and if so to what extent?
I leave it to your readers to discover for themselves.
From: scaremongering.net/blog
The Return of the Kings
Posted by toninu - June 20th, 2009
I can’t remember another month were I’ve been pleased by the sheer brilliance of horror genre like this one and what’s more, I definitely can’t remember a month in which what pleased me was not only foreign, but foreign and Maltese, with both being on the same levels of greatness...All in all this is looking like its shaping up to be a truly good year for Maltese literature and even though I am still aware that a couple of months ago I was spitting at all those that claimed so, my point was finally tipped over and I started seeing the light as soon as I read Alfred Sant’s new novel, or dare I say genre masterpiece, L-Ghalqa ta’ l-Iskarjota. This novel is absolutely everything a good genre novel should be. The story moves at a lovely pace easily comparable to Stephen King or Michael Crichton and brilliantly merges science-fiction with ghost horror leading up to an insanely cruel third act climax that could have been very easily written by Edgar Allen Poe or Clive Barker. And above all Alfred Sant has the most ironic and witty voice I have ever read in Maltese giving the entire novel a satirical context the likes of which I read only in Jonathan Coe. Yet none of it is derivative at any point, page after page the story keeps building up into its own unique shape and none of the quips or sharp asides ever feel ripped off or second hand.
This is Maltese literature, this is what Maltese literature can do. It can tell good stories, it can observe and shed light on our insane way of life, and it can also, yes, why not, entertain. Something many writers simply keep either forgetting or literally neglecting due to snobbish intellectual aspirations. But somebody else entertained me this month, another king rose from his multimillion blockbuster grave and gave us a low budget good old scare-us-shitless-and-make-us-scream horror movie that literally dragged me to hell.
Sam Riami has been grilled by fans world wide since his foray into Spidey’s world about when was he going to set the web slinger aside and give us all what we have been really waiting for; Evil Dead 4. Finally he took a break after the gigantic mess that was Spidey 3 and gave us something better, Drag me to hell...
So there it goes, June 2009, the month our own dead king rose from the grave and gave us an immediate literary horror classic and the month the B-horror movie king waded out of the A-movie millions he was making to deliver again what he always delivered best in the first place, sheer horror. Both works of art, (and yes, these are works of art, they might not be snobbish, they might not be preachy and they might not be attempting to crack the new ism, but there’s definitely lots of art in there) grab attention, both works entertain and both works ultimately move us in more ways than one making them an unforgettable experience.
Long live the kings, their return was more than welcome.
