Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1285850
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 SEPTEMBER 2020 4 THIS WEEK BOOKS Author Karl Schembri returns to the local publishing scene while continuing to pursue his international humanitarian work in parallel, as both the picture book It-Tifel Li Salva d-Dinja and the re-issue of his incendiary 2006 novel Il-Manifest Tal-Killer hit the shelves courtesy of Merlin Publishers. He speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about the wildly different releases Coming full circle How does it feel to be back on the local publishing scene, with two broadly different volumes published by Merlin? Three, actually – there's also The Lulu Diaries published by Ede Books. It feels great to be back, although it also feels weird not being able to be around and having to witness it all from abroad in these bizarre times. Also weirdly, the three books were written quite a while ago. Il-Manifest tal-Killer is in its third edition, first published in 2006, this being the first time with Merlin, while It-Tifel li Sal- va d-Dinja is out for the first time, also with Merlin, but I wrote the very first version of that story in 2013. And then there is The Lulu Diaries, which were originally written at the end of 2012, when I was living in the Gaza Strip and I had this feisty Palestinian kitten living with me, after she was rescued from the streets during a deadly Israeli military escalation. So it feels quite like delayed gratifi- cation, a nice way to come back to the publishing scene with quite a varied, if not schizophrenic, range of writings: from the foul-mouthed angry anarchist novel to a story for children about love, to a funny book about a Gazan kitten. In a way, that tells you a lot about why I write creatively: it allows me to take on multiple personalities without having to go to a psychiatrist. Could you guide us through the evolu- tion of It-Tifel Li Salva d-Dinja? What inspired you to dive into your first foray into children's literature and picture books, and what were the first stages of the process after you hit upon its core ideas? I wrote the very first draft of 'It-Tifel' in one go on a little notebook in Cai- ro, in a cafe in Tahrir Square, in Janu- ary 2013. I wrote it as a short story in English. The original idea was built around the image of a little boy with no friends, a loner, perhaps bullied or just picked on, who could change the world because of an intense, unlikely friend- ship with the sun, against all odds and breaking all laws. I also wanted that friendship, or love, to be as undefined as possible, refusing to be pigeon-holed, staying unique and extraordinary. I didn't think much of writing for chil- dren, although it's something I love to do and experiment with. I was mostly concerned with a pret- ty simple story to be told in its purest form. The placing, the categorisation, the marketing, all come much later. In fact, when I first approached Chris Gruppetta of Merlin a few years ago with the English original, he politely turned it down although he admitted liking the story. So he added that if I were to rewrite it into Maltese and ex- pand it, he would be interested. I took it as a challenge to be disciplined and take this on as a serious project, which also included expanding the story into six chapters. Chris put me in touch with Clare Azzopardi and Rachel Portelli, who are the editors behind the Tikka Qari series, and from then on it was a back and forth of ideas and literary pruning. Throughout this process, Clare and Rachel helped me immensely to make sure that the story was speaking to chil- dren. For example, I love using long sentences with never ending brackets and deviations, digressions of quirks and distractions, as a way of being play- ful with language and teasing the read- er. But that doesn't work all that well with children who need to focus on the essence of the story. So in our back and forth I think we managed to find the right balance that still introduces chil- dren to the playfulness of language – that a story is not just a story, but it's also about the little seemingly inconse- quential details that colour it. Like life. What do you make of the book's accompanying illustrations by Alice Samuel? What was your collaborative process like, and what were some of the main elements of the narrative that you wanted her to bring out? Alice did an amazing job of bringing out the love and tender resilience in the story. We started off by going through what we felt were the most picture-wor- thy instances in the story, but I also loved that she managed to capture the quirky sides of it, the little brackets and digressions, such as the drawing of a cat defying the laws of gravity to the shock of a bird who thought it was safe up there on a tree. It's just a couple of sentences in the story, asking the reader to imagine what the consequences would be if the laws of the universe had to stop functioning, including the law of gravity, with a di- rect impact for example on birds who would have no safety nesting on the top of a tree if cats could reach them so eas- ily. For me, having that image illustrated was extremely important in reinforcing "Creative writing allows me to take on multiple personalities without having to go to a psychiatrist" Karl Schembri (Photo by Ray Attard)