Truth that has an element of fiction
Author Joe Bugeja returns with The Strange Truth of Fiction, a series of short stories dealing with a range of situations that are alternately tragic and humorous. Bugeja sets the scene for his characters both in Malta and abroad, taking the reader to...
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Author Joe Bugeja returns with The Strange Truth of Fiction, a series of short stories dealing with a range of situations that are alternately tragic and humorous.
Bugeja sets the scene for his characters both in Malta and abroad, taking the reader to a variety of destinations like France, Britain, Libya, Chile, Florida and California.
This publication, unlike his previous work, Reminiscences of Childhood in Floriana, is a collection of vignettes and snapshots taken from the life experiences of various families. It is, in essence, a memoir, a record of events that portray life’s incidents, accidents and deaths.
The stories all deal with the variety of emotions that makes us human. One such example is Oh My Mama, to Me She Was So Wonderful, where the unexpected conclusion shows life coincidences as a feature of God’s own making.
The Valletta setting in Those Were the Days, My Friend captures the fun of young men and women in the early 1950s, while Love is a Many Splendoured Thing will make readers recall their own love life, an individualistic experience that nonetheless brings with it universal emotions.
“In short, readers will discover unexpected personal resemblances and similar reminiscences. They will see that, despite the uniqueness of each story, they too have come across similar situations in their own life.”
The author believes that human life is subject to the contradictory pulls of tragedy and comedy, both being universal combinations that affect man’s life on Earth. Each of Bugeja’s anecdotes seeks to underline this truism.
Readers will discover unexpected personal resemblances and similar reminiscences
The author weaves together a series of events that are all based on real life, peppered with a dash of imaginative fiction that can be both intensely dramatic and highly emotional. Occasionally, Bugeja interjects comic episodes in the life of his characters, episodes that he says are true life encounters and that are intended to provide light relief from the tension of previous emotional narrations.
“Stories like the adventure of two teachers in Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya, Only in Libya, will certainly elicit some smiles, as will the situations described in A Distorted Portrait of an Eccentric Family.
In his stories, Bugeja also seeks to show how man is subject to superior forces such as coincidence, destiny, fortune, misfortune and even providence. The misadventures encountered by the characters in the book are a representation of this belief, with every character exploring human behaviour in order to offer insights into what Bugeja calls the human predicament.
“The predicament arises in a universe that is sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but often indifferent. A book of short stories is generally totally fictitious; mine is based on real episodes coloured by imagination drawn from previous knowledge. The element of truth pervades the stories, hence the title.”