You are Italian.  What brought you to Malta?

The first time I came to Malta I was 17-years-old. My father, Pasquale Pistorio, for a quarter century was the CEO of ST Micro and ST Micro has a very strong presence here in Malta. I immediately fell in love with this country. What struck me most back then was the sharp contrast between the landscapes of barren rocks in the middle of the Mediterranean and the extraordinary wealth of the country's heritage, her architecture, with her fortified cities and her cathedrals. These beautiful monuments seemed out of place on such an island. Thus it is, that the answers are found in Malta's history. Once I realised that for centuries Malta was the furthermost vanguard of Christendom, making this country not only what must have been the most fortified dot on the planet but also home to the cream of European aristocracy, the stark contrast of this island made perfect sense. The best of the best came here to prove their worth in defending Christendom against the onslaught of Ottoman tyranny, and once you realise this, once the history of Malta sinks under your skin, this whole country gains a different dimension.

Ironically before moving here, I lived in Singapore for 20 years, another Island Republic, in many ways both reminiscent of the merchant city-states of Renaissance Italy. I came here because of my entrepreneurial activity which alas I had to abandon because of Covid. But as we say in Italian, "non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere," liberally translated: "every cloud has a silver lining." Had I not abandoned entrepreneurship, I would not have been able to focus on writing. I had chosen Malta as the headquarters of my Singaporean biometrics company, and instead Malta became the place where I could resume my studies and dedicate myself to bringing history alive and relatable beyond the academic sphere.

Yes, you mentioned you are back in university, and what do you mean by making history more relatable? How does your novel come into this?

As a young man I already longed to escape sedentary office/city life, and I worked on fishing vessels. Again, during Covid, I put myself at zero salary and since I could not go back to Singapore, I started working as a sailor here in Malta. I got my certification as Master of Vessel 200GT (Gross Tons) and I started freelancing as a captain on supply vessels, tugs and other service boats. These jobs can be very hectic. Apart from anything else I normally had two -and-half or three hours fighting to keep myself awake at the helm. That's when I started writing this story around an extraordinary event, albeit regarded historically as a minor event, around the Battles of Cagayan in Northern Luzon, in the Philippines. Let me tell you a little about these battles as my book is centred around them.

Please go on. I have certainly never heard of these battles.

Well, the entire novel is a reconstruction of daily lives in the second half of the 16^th Century, the events narrated in the letters from Donna Elisabetta, Fray Francisco and Don Salvador, that I had found (you will find out where I had found them when you read the novel) which are the three parts of the trilogy. They roughly start with the Dragut's raid of Gozo. This was the year when Elisabetta was born. We then follow the lives of our protagonists through the Great Siege and the Battle of Lepanto. After Lepanto, Philip II, king of Spain's Siglo de Oro, calls upon the Tercio Viejo de Sicilia, which is stationed in Palermo but works closely with the Order of St John and was despatched twice to Malta during the Great Siege as the Piccolo Soccorso and shortly after the Grande Soccorso.  It was called upon to travel to the Philippines to quell the harassment the fledgling Spanish colony was experiencing at the hands of Japanese Wokou pirates. This is a true and well documented story. At the time in the East China and South China Seas, the new Ming Emperor decided to seal off China from the world in terms of maritime access. He closed all the ports notwithstanding the extraordinary expedition of Zheng He, that had sparked extremely rich commercial routes in those bodies of water. This decision to close all the ports along the coast of China under Ming rule, caused tens of thousands of sailors to turn to piracy. The Portuguese, who had long been present in the region with very well-established commercial settlements and concessions in Nagasaki, Macau, the Moluccas, Goa, Malacca, and of course Formosa, did not like the arrival of Spanish merchants settling in the Philippines. So they engaged the primarily Japanese Wokou pirates to raid Spanish galleons. This happened at a time just before the establishment of the Pacific route known as the Manila Galleon. This would become one of the most important arteries of global commerce. People don't realise that Manila at the time was the world's first intercontinental cosmopolitan city and dictating the currency of the entire planet. Philip II sent the best of the best of his special forces, the Tercio Viejo, from Palermo and Malta, all the way to the Philippines to fight against these waves of piracy. It was the first proxy war between two Western superpowers fought far away from home. The letters I mention in this novel tell the story of  the first globalised century that preceded and culminated in these battles through the eyes of their three main protagonists: Donna Elisabetta, a Maltese woman of Spanish descent, more specifically of Sephardic Jewish descent, who falls in love with Don Salvador de Colon, great grandson of Cristóbal Colón, a meticio boy adopted at a tender age by the Tercio Viejo who by the time of the Great Siege had already fought all over Europe. The Tercio was a military unit conceived by Philip II's Father, Charles V, which became the most infallible infantry in the world. 

The world back then was far more diverse and not as backwards as we were led to believe. When people ask me how can an orphan girl like Elisabetta be so knowledgeable, I reply jokingly, "she didn't have television." Through these letters we really see the 16^th century world as the Dawn of the Planetary Era, at a time where the ideas of the modern mind take shape, and we see them take shape not through the pen of scholars but that of regular citizens. The idea of the diversified tasks of the Tercio is also important, as in the third volume of The Sicilian Dragons we will find out why it is so.  The Tercio, led by its new captain in the Philippines using a strategy of flank tactic called the Sicilian Dragon in chess, hence the name of my novel, and before the battles, an exchange with the governor of Luzon and the ambassador of the Shogun who travels to Manila to dissuade the Spaniards from attacking the pirate settlement established by Tay Fusa, highlights how battles are not merely won on the basis of numbers, but by elevating the individual capabilities of its men. Our history is so rich of extraordinary people, we really don't need to rely on Harry Potter or Game of Thrones.

From your novel transpires a very religious outlook, is it the product of historical accuracy or is it your own perspective that seeps through?

Both. In the sense that religion was everything to our ancestors. Traditionalists still have a saying that comes from the rich production of Western creativity, in terms of poetry, literature, but particularly evident in art and especially in music: "everything is liturgy." Centuries of composers dedicated their lives to help human beings feel the presence of the Holy Spirit during Mass. This is true of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and to a lesser degree Beethoven.  It is certainly true for painters up until the Renaissance. What happened is that the Christian creed that united and forged Europe - especially after the collapse of the Graeco-Roman world - slowly fractured in less universal and more dissonant bodies of beliefs.  These catered to nation-states and secular ideologies, until the failure of these belief systems imploded in the horrors of the 20^th Century giving way to the moral and intellectual vacuum of our contemporary prevailing ideology, Nihilism. So, if I want to depict the way our ancestors thought, I am obliged to focus on the vigour of their faith, and this in turn also reflects my own position, because I have myself gone through the process of realising the absurdity of our current Nihilism and the rationality that buttresses Christianity.

Rationality? Do you mean that Faith is rational?

Absolutely. Christianity is founded on the Aristotelian principles of pathos (compassion), logos (reason) and ethos (which requires empiricism). It is the construction of a world view that caters to the intentions of a rational and forgiving God that has created this Universe and everything within it - a long shot from the whimsical and vindicative gods of old that merely enacted the will of tyrannical rulers. This clash between the old irrational and whimsical gods of tyrants and the rule of Christ is a central theme of The Sicilian Dragons, and it unfolds by witnessing the impact the notion of a rational and loving God had on people who had until that day only experienced either slavery or the right of might. Hellenism and Christianity replaced the laws of the jungle, no matter how sophisticated in the great civilisations of the Bronze Age, with consensus societies whereby rulers had to abide to the virtues of reason, truth and compassion to win the following of their subjects. These are completely different worlds, which explain both why the West developed at such a speed to outpace every other civilisation in the world as well as the reason why Christianity was so formidably embraced by every people that encountered the Word of Christ. What we see in the 16^th Century is no more, no less, a perfect re-enactment of what occurred throughout Judea and the entire Roman Empire in the First Century when Christ and His Church and His Apostles first spread the Good News of a rational and forgiving God. Everywhere in the world the Word immediately resonates in the hearts of every human being, and we witness time and again the simple people break the chains of their captivity to become Christian while those in power persecute them. It is still happening today, only that we in the West take the gift we received for granted and have forgotten how privileged we actually are to be free to practice the Word of God without retaliation.

But what do you mean when you say you have experienced this process of realisation personally?

Many genuinely believe it is possible to construct an ethical society without God. But if there is a rational and charitable God, Chaos cannot win. What many of these well-meaning atheists do not realise is that notwithstanding their good intentions, the denial of a supreme rational being inevitably sets the stage for Nihilism, because without a God that holds us accountable, Nihilism appeals to our lower instincts. I do not need a God to behave in a virtuous manner, that is certainly true, my commitment to my brethren should suffice to command a virtuous conduct from me, but I am just one, and the absence of God constantly appeals to our basic urges that we are not accountable for anything we do. In a way the opposite of what Nietzsche had hoped to achieve by 'killing God' has materialised. Men have not risen to assume their full responsibilities; they have completely cowered away from them. The contemporary mindset blames everything on external conditions. If someone commits a crime it is because of his circumstances, if someone is irrational it is because of his health conditions. We blame everything on some external factor, and we become accustomed to the idea that we have no agency over ourselves. Mental illness, depression, and suicide, abound today in our Western societies, and they do so because we have lost our own sense of responsibility. In the first volume of The Sicilian Dragons, Donna Elisabetta, the heroine, frequently repeats that despair is an act of blasphemy against the miracle of God's Creation. I have come to the same identical conclusion. We need to understand that there is nothing wrong in acknowledging we are fighting demons every day. Padre Pio, one of the most beloved and miraculous saints of the 20^th Century was constantly wrestling demons. On the contrary it should be of comfort to anyone struggling with temptation to know that the closer you are to God the more fiercely the Evil One will tempt you. Just like the Good Shepherd will neglect all his flock to save the lamb that has gone astray, so the Evil One  will focus on the souls that are escaping his temptations. And if you fall? So be it. Pick yourself up and rise again. There is no one to blame but yourself. We were created in the image of such perfection that evil can do us no harm. Evil can deceive us, but in the end, we are always called upon to make a choice. Whatever we do, it is always our choice, and no number of pills can compensate or overcome this most intrinsic aspect of our human nature.

It sounds as if you have given these ideas a great deal of thought.

Today there is a concerted top-down effort to desecrate and dehumanise everything. They are trying to erase everything that recalls anything sacred in our lives.

A close friend of mine in Singapore, Jacky Tai, a very successful entrepreneur, and a devout Christian, encouraged me to pray as I was going through very challenging times. I had not prayed since the age of ten, when my family moved to the US and I did not resume catechism. I prayed, but this time I applied all those instruments I had learned over the decades of practising Hindu and Buddhist spiritual exercises: breathing, concentration, visualisation, projection, empathy I felt the infinite unadulterated Love of Christ for all of us, willing to endure the greatest sacrifice to reassure us of the Kingdom of Heaven we have been promised. I realised that what Christ had gifted us with was a way to relate to Him in our everyday lives. I have since adopted the Rosary because it is the instrument that every day allows me to relive the joys and sorrows of the Holy Family which are in fact the joys and sorrows of being human.

This is what I want to portray in the stories of Donna Elisabetta, Fray Francisco and Don   Salvador. How our ancestors lived, and as I say in the book, how "by virtue of not fearing Death, lived life to the fullest."