'Il-Ħajt għandu widintu'

Author: Christopher Attard Biancardi

Publisher: Horizons Publications / 2025

Pages: 166

The first thing a reader would notice is the surname. Biancardi is not a common surname in Malta, even though Malta has many Italian surnames, coming from the time when many Italians settled in Malta, some for political reasons.

Among those oriundi there was Niccolo', a journalist, who chronicled the Maltese scene then.

Now his descendant (the exact link is not made clear) has tried his hand at the genre. What we find are upward of 70 short stories which make for pleasant reading.

As Dr Sergio Grech explains in the introduction, the essence of a short story is its brevity, its economical use of words which still manage to make a point.

One important characteristic of this collection is its portrayal of today's Malta - the Malta of failed marriages, of the many non-Maltese who have come to live here, love stories on the catamaran to Sicily, scenes from domestic violence, even the collection of plastic bottles, the tailor shop that becomes the village's first takeaway, prayer meetings, Mafia in Malta, child abuse, the inconvenience of construction next door, traffic accidents, the influx of migrants, megastores and price match guarantee, animal rights, traditional themes like the hares and the titotla, karozzin, reunions, underhand paedophilia, secret double lives, child suicides, memoires of a prostitute, cleaning the attic, Peeping Tom and the Polish neighbour, dealing with a rebellious 16-year-old daughter, bulk refuse, meeting a childhood lover in a Retirement Home, the Filipino carer, meeting the son's new boyfriend, the plane spotter, and many other similar stories.

Surely the older Biancardi did not have such a colourful life.