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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 JULY 2021 4 MALTA BOOK FESTIVAL A pint with Irvine Welsh Mark Vella is a writer, editor, transla- tor, and the founder and former direc- tor of early-noughties publishing house Minima Publishers. Nearly a decade after the publication of Trainspotting in 1993, Minima was publishing daring fiction by a new generation of up-and- coming Maltese authors which have drawn comparisons to works by Irvine Welsh – what were you responding to with those publica- tions? We were mostly picking up on de- velopments going on in the 90s in the UK, from Britpop and Cool Brittania to works like Irvine's, especially right after watching the Trainspotting movie, or Niall Griffiths', and seminal events such as the Young British Artists exhibition. All this signalled a certain way of in- terpreting our social realities by going against what we considered our stuffy literary and cultural forefathers – I guess that Ġużè Stagno and Immanuel Mifsud are the two salient moments of this period – together with a yet un- heard of, tongue-in-cheek approach to the general concept of the writer and literature and its promotion. What was your reaction to the announce- ment of this year's international guest at the Malta Book Festival? Did it bring back memories from Minima's heyday? It must be that so many years and lives seem to have passed, so the official news really hit me and took me back to a time that seems so distant now, but that real- ly set the foundations, in its quirky and random way, for the current book scene – which thrives despite all that's thrown against it. Obviously, having Irvine Welsh here this year can be viewed as somewhat crowning the Minima legacy. Having read and watched Trainspotting, and then becoming a fan and follower of Ir- vine's work, meant that his novels were, so to say, a reference point for a par- ticular publishing and authorial ethos. Immanuel Mifsud is a National Book Prize winning author and a lecturer at the University of Malta, where he teaches Maltese literature. For some time you've been introducing your students to Welsh's books to speak of literary influence and place Malta's literature in an international context. What did you make of the reviews of L-Istejjer Strambi ta' Sara Sue Sammut (Minima, 2002) that commented on the influence of fiction concerned with drug habits and subcultures then associated with Irvine Welsh? Quite honestly I don't remember what the reviews were, although I do remem- ber that Irvine Welsh was referred to quite a lot in the 90s here. And if I'm not mistaken that was even before the film version of Trainspotting came out. Those were the times when local news- papers were full of news and features about underground and unlicensed rave parties, ecstasy use, and the new craze with house, techno or whatever that senseless noise was called. We saw "sex, drugs and rock and roll" shift to "drugs and e" (not sure about the sex part despite all the bunk with love drugs and Sex Is Natural (SIN) parties). In spite of the similarities between what we were writing then and Welsh's nov- els (and let us not forget my good friend Niall Griffiths too), there was one very important difference: unlike Welsh, we were not ravers ourselves. Or at least I wasn't. I actually abhorred rave music and all that went with it. At one point, then, Mark Vella of Mini- Irvine Welsh is the international guest of the 2021 Malta Book Festival. He'll be sitting down for an extended interview on his life and works with Wayne Flask, and again with Immanuel Mifsud in an exchange moderated by Mark Vella to discuss the generation- defining inf luence of the Scottish writer's works. Ahead of the Festival, the National Book Council spoke to the moderators and fellow writers who will be appearing on stage with Irvine Welsh at this year's Book Festival.