Merlin books presents another gem from multi-award winning author Clare Azzopardi.

It’s perhaps the defining prank of the Facebook generation. When a Facebook friend not usually known for wild irreverent status updates, suddenly spouts a status proclaiming to all his 793 online friends "I need sex", you know he's been fraped.

Most frapes of course elicit a smile out of us, and a good old laugh among victim and perpetrator. But occasionally, a frape either gets out of hand with unforeseen consequences, or is born out of malice or envy and turns into a form of cyber-bullying. Such is the intriguing premise of Clare Azzopardi's new novel, Frejp.

Azzopardi is one of Malta's most accomplished young authorstoday, having multiple awards under her belt and having authored some of the most iconic and bestselling children's novels of recent years (the De Molizz books, the Jake Cassar series) and an adult novel, Il-Linja l-Hadra, that had won the highest two awards at the National Book Awards when published. She has also represented Maltese literature at numerous international festivals, most recently in Bali.

Frejp is her first novel aimed at, and written for, teenagers and young adults – anyone who lives online and whose Facebook wall is an extension of self. Restricting a book into an age bracket is often tricky – with children’s books because reading age varies so wildly from one child to the next, especially reading in Maltese; and with other books because a good book will appeal to a very wide spectrum. Thus with Frejp, which  is nominally a young adult book, and is written, packaged and promoted as such; however the sheer strength of the story and the immediacy of the writing transcend ages and adults of all ages have been enjoying it.

In Frejp, Azzopardi tackles the teenage world of locker room spite and rivalry among girls, where a girl's iPhone is stolen from her bag and used to frape her, with embarrassing status updates and personal photos stored on her phone uploaded for all her online friends to gawk at.

Meanwhile, across town another girl – from a social background that couldn’t be more different to the first girl’s – faces a stifling family situation. It is this clash of realities and social groups – the vast chasm between sub-cultures in the same town on this tiny island – that, beyond the frape subject-matter, makes this novel so addictive and impressive.

Azzopardi manages to channel young adults’ language, tics and behaviours, in a story as topical as they come. It’s written in an extremely casual, unstructured style, with short scenes that go back and forth across the timeline. The young adults in the novel live a life that most Maltese teenagers will identify with, and the protagonist’s reaction to having been fraped is one that could easily have been that of any of her peers given the same circumstances.

The very fact that a Maltese novel is tackling themes such as cyber-bullying is a poignant reminder of just how much Maltese literature has evolved over the past years. The perceived limitation of themes to the traditional love, nostalgia and nationalism, is but a distant memory. Frejp is a novel fully immersed in the realities of social media, in young lives that are not only digitally native but social media native.

Published by Merlin during the recently-held Malta Book Fair, Frejp was one of the top sellers on Merlin’s stand at the Fair. Azzopardi herself was present on various occasions at the Fair to sign copies of her novel.

A book’s packaging is an extension of the book itself, and for Frejp Merlin art director Pierre Portelli decided to give the book a smartphone feel. The book itself is smaller in size than your average paperback, mimicking the look and feel of a phone, and conveniently fitting into a bag – just like the protagonist’s nicked iPhone did. Merlin also produced a limited edition of Frejp that comes with a stainless-steel mount on the front. These limited copies are fast becoming a coveted item, even as they are running out.

 

frape(fre?p)v. to alter information in a person’s profile on a social networking website without his or her permission; word origin: from Facebook + rape - (Collins English Dictionary)