I remember I had read the original in Maltese some years ago and maybe even reviewed it. This is now a translation in English and the fact that no name of the translator is included makes me think that Sant himself penned the translation, a double achievement if that is so.

Maybe reading this complex book twice, one in translation, helps in the understanding; for a first reading might turn away the reader because of the attack by hordes of rats, as is portrayed in the cover of the book.

In actual fact, however, while the rat attack is indeed the culminating moment of the book, there is much more besides.

The book reports from the inside, as it were, the goings on of a media company called Quis Quam, a clone of our Where's Everybody, with a very popular discussion programme with a charismatic leader, backed by a professional team, choosing subjects with a mass appeal with inputs by experts in the field.

Facing a dearth of subjects, the leader chooses a subject that is so far unresearched and which can open up Malta's prehistory in a way that is not covered by the history books in the schools.

This is, in short, to investigate how the Phoenicians came to make Malta their sub-base.

The interest by the television programme leads it to focus on an area in Malta's countryside called Znuber with two strange hillocks, a tiny hamlet where most of the inhabitants are dead (shades of Hal Millieri) and with a strange resident priest who seems to have been demoted from his previous high visibility post.

As things sometimes happen in what remains of our countryside, the past has its own dark tales to tell and maybe the present is not that limpid either.

On the side of all this there is an exhibition being mounted by the heritage body on Malta's Phoenician past and two international experts coming to deliver speeches. And an experiment is being set up to try and capture the language that the Maltese of that time used to speak.

If all this is not confusing enough, the EU is in a flap because the figures for Malta's manufacturing products just don't make sense at all. And Malta's minuscule secret service is in a flap of its own because data from Dar Malta is being hacked.

Now put in all these ingredients in one pot and stir and mix well and you will get a dark tale you will never forget.