When originally published, Lino Spiteri's second anthology of novels, Hala taz-Zghozija, was compared to a microscope focused on Maltese society as it was in the sixties, a society characterised by a boom in estate property and many social changes, brought about by the adoption of new traditions and values.

Each novel revolved around the average, real person caught up in the situations brought about by Post-World War II poverty and political development so dryly described by the author. During the preparation of the revised edition of this collection of novels, Spiteri admitted that he wasn't sure about how he felt while going back over half his lifetime to revisit his early novels.

The 2006 edition, recently published by PEG Ltd, speaks for itself. It gives evidence of the literary lens that Spiteri utilised to focus on society since his early days as an author, and which he kept using and honing through the years in his later literary efforts.

His novels remain relevant to this very day, especially due the questions they rouse and provoke. One of these is related to why censures prohibited the reading of the novel Anatomija at the Manoel Theatre, though it sensitively tackles some common dilemmas troubling married couples and the issue of birth control.

In the preface to the new edition Spiteri writes that this anthology, the second of seven he would eventually write, and which contains twelve of the one hundred and ten novels which he penned, is identical in content to the first edition: it remains part of him, irrespective of what judgment others might pass after having read his novels.

In his preface to the book, Prof. Oliver Friggieri writes that Lino Spiteri's novel is "heir to the realist tradition, and a typical artistic product of its time", in which the author is randomly present either as a director of the narrative, a secondary character or a protagonist.

"Spiteri creates the backgrounds and surroundings in which his characters live and in which their destinies unfold by faithfully reproducing the colloquial essence of the man in the street… Sketches and situations, characters and moral principles become entwined to form a colourful representation of society. The journalist, the politician and the writer are three different facets of the same man's identity, whose writing style draws energy from wherever it can, ready to simultaneously drive the skills of the three."

The longer novel which gives its name to the anthology was adapted for television, and was also published as a graphic novel.

The cover of the first edition of Hala taz-Zghozija carried a design by Tony Preca. The same design, still known as one of the most visually striking in the local publication scene, has been incorporated into the new 2006 edition by artist Pierre Portelli.

The book can be purchased from all leading bookshops, and from the PEG Ltd stand at the Malta Trade Fair.