Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1426475
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 NOVEMBER 2021 8 BOOKS Aleks Farrugia's latest novel Camerata! available at Malta Book Festival Camerata! is available for purchase at the Malta Book Festival 2021 SKS Publishers has announced the publication of Camerata!, the new novel by Aleks Farrugia, which will be available for sale on the stand of SKS Publishers at the Malta Book Festival 2021. Camerata! was launched on Friday, 29 October, at the Val- letta Design Cluster and is the second of Aleks Farrugia's pub- lications with SKS. His first, Għall-Glorja tal-Patrija, won the National Book Prize 2020. Camerata! is what Farrugia calls a quasi-detective novel set in the 1930s. Introducing Inspector Salvu Camilleri, an unconventional and volatile character with his own demons to fight, Camerata! is a novel about corruption and betrayal, about silences and lies, about misplaced ambitions and mis- takes that mark a man's life. The novel has already attract- ed the critics' attention. Poet and academic Dr Nor- bert Bugeja said that Camerata! reminded him "in instances of Stendhal, Eco and Chandler, while Farrugia always retains his own voice and style... the novel keeps you constantly on your toes, and at times makes you doubt whether you are reading the pages of a book or those from your life," he said. PRof. John Portelli, poet and educator, called Aleks Farrugia "a refined writer of substance, with a masterly grasp of the Maltese language". Portelli said Camerata! was "a most intriguing novel, pop- ulated with energetic and lively characters, well-wrought bit- ing dialogues, reflecting the mentalities of corruption, pas- sion and the struggle for truth and justice." Critic and lecturer Dr Da- vid Aloisio said he considered Camerata! as an "effective ex- ercise of retrospection as much as an opportunity for the read- ers to reflect on our current so- cial reality." Camerata! is sold at the price of €15 and, following the Book Festival, will be available in lo- cal bookshops and online from the website skspublishers.com. Aleks Farrugia