Ktieb ix-Xwejjaħ

Author and illustrations: Ġorġ Mallia

Publisher: Merlin Publishers

Pages: 228

Ktieb ix-Xwejjaħ (The Book of the Old Man) by Ġorġ Mallia is considered to be the first fully-fledged high fantasy book ever published in Maltese. It was first published in 1987. A new, expanded and revised edition has just been published by Merlin Publishers.

The first half of the book is a set of stories, frameworked into one whole, that introduce the enchanted land of Terani, run by a benevolent king who relies almost entirely on the wisdom of his vizier, the eponymous "old man". It is a land of many wonders, full of the most colourful characters. The man who walks around with a cloud on his head, for example, or the liar whose pants catch fire (and the myopic dragon who thinks him a long lost brother). There is the artist who steals the rainbow from the sky, and the nymph that dances on the head of a deer, out in the dark woods, as well as the alien monster builder of mountains. These and so many others populate the first half of Ktieb ix-Xwejjaħ. In the first half, the atmosphere is generally light, though there too are hints that the darkness is very close by.

In the second part of the book, that takes the form of a fantasy quest, that darkness overtakes the world, threatening it and all its inhabitants with destruction. That is why the old vizier sets out to find the enchanted book that can set it all right.

Ġorġ Mallia draws on the best traditions of fantasy writing in this book, which has become a classic since its initial publication. There is the quest, of course, which is at the core of most works of fantasy, ranging from Homer's Odessey to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. There is a mythology created by the author, and the story often takes the form favoured by the Sword and Sorcery tradition made popular in the early 20th century.

Mallia has also drawn the thirty seven line illustrations that illuminate the book. Some are from the original work, that he had started working on in 1979. Some are brand new and created for this edition. Many of the illustrations, however, are a mixture of the old illustrations and new ones. The dates in which each of the images was created can also be found in the book for the information of the reader. Mallia uses a dynamic, cross-hatching style that, though in grayscale and black and white, captures the far-flung reaches of the imagination that drive this book.

Ġorġ Mallia's writing is flowing and poetic, as befits the fantastic content and the enchanted context. Those readers who loved this book when it first came out will be happy to re-find the gems hidden in its multi-faceted story. But the new publication also makes this classic story available to those new readers that had no access to the book, since it has been out of print for decades.

It is a book full to brimming with a wild imagination and an enchantment that will stay with its readers for a very long time.