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Alfred Sant: Ċpar: Aktar Rakkonti u Divertimenti. SKS Publishers, 2013. 248 pp.
Alfred Sant, former prime minister and currently a member of the European Parliament, has been declared winner of last year’s edition of the National Book Prize in the category of literary prose in Maltese.
Sant’s Ċpar consists of a series of 10 versatile narratives, all indicative of the author’s skill at depicting different facets of the human condition. Sant is equally at ease delineating parochial microcosms as he is examining the vastness of cities, where people stumble and trip in various psycho-social complexities.
Today, Sant is known for the naturalness and concreteness of his dialogue. In fact, the author is a man of the theatre and his early works, ranging from television plays to longer works of a more complex nature, are closely bound to this genre.
This moniker divertisment, which the author has chosen for Ċpar, could give the narratives a popular feel, seeing that they are always grounded in actual situations with a subtle political thread binding them together. After all, as a seasoned politician, the author can’t leave out the political dimension in human existence.
However, ambiguities abound, as does deceitfulness and infidelity in relationships, be they social or political. In this sense, Sant’s stories are shrouded in a mysterious veil and nothing is what it seems. Reality, then, is concealed by the mist of the title of this rich anthology that deserves multiple readings and widespread diffusion.
Sant revisits cultural episodes that resonate strongly in Malta. For example, in Joyce u Karla, a seasoned theatre director collaborates with a university researcher to study the development of Maltese theatre in the 1960s and 1970s.
In this particular narrative Sant poses the question whether theatre can survive the onslaught of social media. In the title story, Ċpar, the air of mystery surrounding historical facts is once again foregrounded in a style the author had already used to great effect in his expansive novel La Bidu, la Tmiem, 1599.
In this instance, however, the historical mystery under scrutiny concerns Reginaldo of Piperno, who tries to decipher the ambiguous circumstances surrounding his patron’s (Thomas Aquinas) sudden demise. At the time of his death in the 13th century, Aquinas had al-most finished his most important philosophical treatise in Fossa Nouva.
An author who can dramatise crucial moments of the human comedy
On a completely different plane, Sant does not flinch from condemning the primitive barbarity on roads congested with traffic and monstrous heavy equipment vehicles.
In Sens Ċiviku, an elderly woman is crushed to death by a water bowser whose screws had been loosened from the axel in an act of sabotage. The victim is sacrificed when she is completely blameless.
Sant is also strong on the minutiae of personal and social relationships in cities, such as Brussels, the heart of European political dealings, where hundreds of Maltese are working nowadays.
However, this is cushioned emigration, with loads of opportunities to earn generous salaries in consultancies, technical advice and related work with think-tanks and large corporate entities. These are the Maltese who are present in the most exclusive part of town, living in spacious glass-walled apartments.
But in the gold-fish bowl existence of those apartments, shielded from the snow and fog, overpowering passions and marital infidelities threaten to disrupt this cosseted and structured existence.
Ċpar, the title story, deals with the new wave of Maltese migrants in search of more fulfilling careers and new adventures. These expatriates have the required professional skills and, in a multinational context, are valued for their intelligence. However, Sant also depicts them as lost souls in search of something they can hardly articulate, a state of being that results in betrayal.
Sant started out as a diplomat in his youth and now he has returned to the Belgian capital as a European politician. So, as an author familiar with the European context and conversant with the rhythms of city life, Sant is keenly aware of failed banking systems, companies on the verge of financial meltdown and street protests that can turn ugly.
In the short story Ir-Ristorant a group of sinister men dressed in brown with a silver necklace around their necks discuss a dodgy matter as they wait for an unidentified person who fails to turn up.
A short distance away from the group’s table is an estranged couple that is trying to reconcile with a celebratory meal. The woman is a source of seduction as the Albanian waiter eyes her up, thus reigniting her waning (if not extinguished) desire for the man seated opposite. The couple’s tension, then, is exacerbated through the sounds, getting louder by the minute, of the street protestors.
Such dramatic moments confirm Sant as an author who can dramatise crucial moments of the human comedy.