'Ras il-Għajn'
Author: Charles Flores
Publisher: Horizons Publications / 2025
Pages: 196

Unfortunately, many authors tend to leave out or forget to list the other works they have already penned, and so readers and critics are left to try and build a bibliography on their own, which many times remains incomplete.

Fortunately, this is not the case here and the bibliography at the end of the book helps us see the sheer amount of the author's prolific writing.

He lists no less than 22 poetry works in Maltese, 13 prose works in Maltese (including two translations that are among my favourites - Kwarantina by Jim Crace and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami), 12 poetry books in English and two prose works in English.

All this while he was holding down a full-time job mostly at a very responsible level.

This book is not an autobiography in the way we understand it but rather a collection of autobiographical essays.

Like other authors (see George Saliba last week) the author begins by speaking about his childhood - in this case Kalkara and Cottonera in general.

This background coloured the way he saw things, his Socialist beliefs, and especially his anti-colonial and even his anti-monarchical beliefs. His father was in the Navy and his mother used to shop at the Naafi, in Castile Square.

Nevertheless  his mother preserved the medal we schoolchildren were given as a memento of the Queen's visit in 1954. This medal is reproduced on the book's cover.

The author then became involved in two initiatives that responded to the spirit of the time, a new feeling of national awakening both in literature with the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju and mixed youth clubs with fierce rivalry between groups like the Sparteens and the Colorados.

I remember the literary evenings held inside the Rabat catacombs with Ray Mahoney and Jane Marshall during which I led a small choir of seminarians.

Later on Flores moved from the Union Press to the State broadcaster, at that time known as Xandir Malta. Those were bad days for Malta and broadcasting in general. 

In 1981 Xandir Malta had announced that Labour had won the election when Labour in fact did not get sufficient votes. 

Then, with Mr Flores in charge of the News Division on 21 August 1985 he issued a directive under his signature banning the name of the Leader of the Opposition from all news on the station.

Flores now says he wrote about this issue in his other book Arlogg Ta' Darba (2010). In this book I am reviewing today he says he was obeying an order 'from above' and that this was in response to the PN boycott of Xandir Malta.

I find that in a short span I have reviewed books by two out of four Heads of News of the main broadcaster, John Inguanez and Mr Flores. (See page 118). If I may be permitted to comment, I remain struck by their focus on minutiae and their blindness regarding the wider issues that emerged in those years.

Not that we are much better today with TVM reading like a notice board of minister after minister and with the Opposition relegated to after the ad break by which time people would have mentally switched off.

This book includes many details about the author's forays in international media in which he joins quite a number of Maltese journalists like John Mizzi, Godfrey Grima and others. I note he had a stint at The European where I was sent for a stage soon after I joined TMI.