AngeloAuthor: Angelo XuerebPublisher: Book Guild Publishing2012Extents: 391pp

At the beginning of this autobiography, I must make it clear my copy of this book did not come from the author.It's a long story but this copy belonged to a person who is now dead and has come to me through a third person. So the review is not linked in any way to the person who dominates the book, and who wrote it, Angelo Xuereb, one of Malta's foremost entrepreneurs.Before beginning to read the book, I thought, no doubt like many readers, I knew all about Angelo. Having read the book, I realise I knew him hardly at all.There are many self-made men around but I doubt if there are any who have also written an autobiography, even if Mr Xuereb mentions Charles Micallef St John as the editor of the script, whatever that may mean.One thing I have come to admire in this book is its candour. The many autobiographies we have had in recent years, especially by politicians, have been a text example how people re-invent their past and hide away the unseemly bits, the defeats, the wrong choices. This book has anything but that. Angelo tells us how his Albanian venture petered out and about the many mishaps and wrong turnings he made when he ventured into local politics, twice, instead of once only.He does not spare people around him. While reticence stops him from naming the Labour minister who proved to be a huge obstacle in the last years of the Labour government 1981-1987, surrounded by people with bulging pockets inside Parliament, he comes across more than clear how his own father hindered and tried to thwart his young business ambitions. Not many people would be that candid about their parents.He explains right from the beginning how he tried to finish the jobs he had contracted for in time and within budget but even so, that, to me, still does not explain the mystery of his success. The young man in a hurry, in post-war Naxxar, known to one and all as Golu, bears little resemblance to the business tycoon of today who built a construction empire, and still unsatisfied, turned his hand with success to hotel accommodation, including building Malta's biggest hotel, to business ventures across the sea, and then, still unsatisfied with his contribution, plunged into politics, first as the first mayor of Naxxar, his hometown, and then to a briefly-aborted political party.The book is instructive of the many ways in which politics works in Malta. He comes from a Nationalist family but made his mark under Labour only then to triumph under PN. While, as said, he is reticent about the identity of the Labour minister who hindered his ambitions in 1987, he is clear about his fall-out with the de Marco family over trees he wanted to remove from in front of their Birguma villa. And attacks by the PN media was the order of the day when he was standing as an independent for mayor or for Josie Muscat's party.Obviously, his bête noir is the Planning Authority with which he had memorable battles, first in the MLP times, then under PN. The scenario is always the same: nameless officials wield enormous power with no checks and balances except by the politicians.Sometimes, as can happen in Malta, projects fall between two successive administrations from opposite parties. A case in point is the Verdala Hotel saga where initially there was reluctance by the PN administration, then by the successive Labour one and finally by the new PN administration. Mr Xuereb blames the Planning Authority. I think this part of the narrative skims the truth. The old Verdala Hotel is still closed and sticking out like a sore thumb on Tal-Virtu ridge. It used to be among Malta's best hotels.Another detail which I feel Mr Xuereb did not give his best description was when talking about his part in the Renzo Piano project. About this, I had spoken many times with Mr Xuereb and he impressed me with the many technical details that went into the steel understructure of the Parliament's two blocks - what precision went into the entire operation. The only thing he remembers for the book is keeping to the timeframes, which is good considering we are still without the new Parliament being ready.By page 365, the book is ready; Mr Xuereb had drawn some concluding remarks and looked back on his past life as if it was over. It was not to be. As the country knows, early on 1 January 2012, a double murder occurred in his daughter's flat, one of the dead persons being his own son-in-law.The mystery has not been unravelled yet and Mr Xuereb does not shed any new light. I prefer to pass it over except to consider the huge trauma this event generated in Mr Xuereb's own family and in that of his daughter.Basically, Mr Xuereb looks on his story as one of a man with determination and courage thwarted at every corner by invisible foes, whether it be politicians or Planning Authority officials more often than not instigated by rivals and competitors. Time and again, he complains bitterly about what happens but time and again he resorts to the same political authorities. One would have thought anyone would have learned to stay away but then in our Malta nothing can be done without the politicians.