Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1395902
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 JULY 2021 5 MALTA BOOK FESTIVAL ma Publishers, told me there were too many junkies and dropouts, and too much drugs and sex in my books; so I wrote In the Name of the Father, where there are no drugs, but there were still a little sex and rock and roll. Which of your books would you recom- mend to Irvine Welsh? I don't know what he likes read- ing. I could offer him to read Hap- py Weekend, which is a compila- tion of stories I had written in the 90s, but also The Best of Times which has just been translated into English and awaiting publication. For contrast, he could also read In the Name of the Father, published in the UK last year. Wayne Flask is the author of the satiric works exposing Malta's political class Kapitali (Merlin Publishers, 2017), and the play Sibna z-Zejt. He is an activist in Moviment Graffiti. You've made it no secret that the works of Irvine Welsh have been a source of inspiration for your own writing. Which elements in particular do you feel have shaped your work and sensibilities? I think my biggest fascination with Welsh is the way he lived, ab- sorbed and documented a whole underworld: from the drug culture and the club scene, to the social re- alities of Scotland under Thatcher, including the miners' strikes and the HIV pandemic. There are gritty depictions of working-class Edinburgh through- out his novels, built through char- acters who orbit in a parallel uni- verse and who sometimes cross each other – be it within the club scene or on the football terraces. Welsh and John Niven (also Scot- tish) are probably the first two au- thors who struck me from the get- go. Black humour's got something to do with it, but their raw, aggres- sive writing has definitely chimed with me. Can't really say Kapitali bears much of an inspiration from Welsh, though. A few years ago you said in an inter- view you wouldn't mind a pint with Welsh – what's the first thing you'd like to discuss? I'd like to know more about how the Scottish see their being colo- nised by the English. There are some similarities be- tween us and Scotland – apart from the coloniser, Maltese society is also highly polarised and divided in two on pretty much everything. Considering the surprising inde- pendence referendum vote a few years back, it'll probably go down to more than one pint.