About the book: On a dark stormy night, a sudden cracking flash of lightning threw the road in bright light. Flittering along there was a procession of hooded figures wearing the white habit of the Archconfraternity of the Misericordia.
It is not anything one might care to meet on any night. But then, this was only one of the many cases of denizens of the occult that make a story which has been replayed throughout the ages of Malta's history, right to our time.
Joseph Attard, one of Malta's most accomplished writers, had, with his well-known painstaking ability for research, assembled an impressive chronicle. It is more of a fantastic narrative of the Maltese occult interwoven with the island's glorious history. Complete with theories and arguments, and also bolstered by personal experiences, it is a strange and eerie story, bound to quicken the most intrepid of hearts; combining the legendary with the authentic. But nonetheless, it forms a coherent whole to explain at last the spectral population of the Ghosts of Malta.
The Ghosts of Malta was first published in 1983. This edition was published with additions in 2019.
About the author: Joseph Attard was born in Vittoriosa and received his education at the Malta Lyceum and The Royal University of Malta. He entered the Civil Service making a brilliant career. Nevertheless, his heart was always in the art of writing which he cultivated since his early formative years. His first successes in this field were in freelance journalism and short-story writing for the English press in the fifties, when he was also given two foreign assignments with UNESCO. His first novel, I Chased a Ghost, was published in the United Kingdom in 1968.
This was followed by Oleanders in the Wind. But as if to establish his equal versatility with his own language, Joseph Attard then wrote four books in Maltese - It-Toroq Kollha Jwasslu għal Ruma (All Roads Lead to Rome), Taħt is-Sinjal ta' Taurus (Under the Sign of Taurus), Ix-Xitan Wasal fit-Tlettax (The Devil Came on the Thirteenth), L-Aħħar Appuntament (The Last Appointment). His next book, The Battle of Malta, was a bestseller. It was published in hardback by William Kimber in 1980 and in two paperback editions in 1982. After that, there were The Ghosts of Malta, Industrial Relations in Malta, Britain and Malta - The Story of an Era, another bestseller, The Atlantis Inheritance, The Angel of Death, The Knights of Malta and The Struggle for the Mediterranean. He has also written several radio plays as well as a television serial.
Joseph Attard passed away in March 2011 aged 87.
No comments:
Post a Comment