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8 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 27 MARCH 2024 INTERVIEW No one's ego is worth more Last month saw the publication of David Samuel Hudson's debut novel M. Here he sits with educator Daniel Xerri to discuss fiction writing in English in Malta, the country's celebration of mediocrity, and the absence of a critical culture. Your novel is about Damian, a young writer whose hubris and contempt for other writers and the Maltese way of doing things seem typical of someone who believes he is too big for the insular context he was born in. One could argue that the way Damian sees Malta is absolutely necessary because it helps us transcend our limitations. What are your views on this? I think that in any small paro- chial community, to have a little bit of arrogance is almost a nec- essary evil. You can't break the ceiling of the society you live in if you don't believe that you can do something. I do see this quite often in Malta, where young people are told to temper their beliefs. We're told to slow down and temper our thoughts. So, in order for someone to effect change they need to have the arrogance of thought to believe that they can in the first place. Damian has a highly conflicted relationship with Malta. What are the sources of this conflict? I think all great writers had a conflicted relationship with the country in which they grew up. This is true of James Joyce, Wil- liam Faulkner and Leo Tolstoy. I think being jingoistic about one's country cannot make you a great writer. Writers question the governments of the day and the country's zeitgeist. In one particular section of my book, there's a character who says that you can't love your country if you're unable to hate it at some point. This is not a new idea; Ol- iver Friggieri said pretty much the same thing in Fil-Parlament Ma Jikbrux Fjuri. My protago- nist hates Malta because he sees mediocrity as being rewarded here. Damian is very much aware that the writing he's producing and the medium he's using make him an outsider. At one point he admits to himself, "The Maltese would eventually reject my writing too because it is unpatriotic. And in English." Was this a fear you had when you started writing in English? I've always felt isolated because I write in English. When I was younger, I approached a local publisher with a manuscript. The first thing he asked me was, "Is the novel in English or in Maltese?" When he learnt that it was in English, he said, "We won't even bother looking at it." When I asked why, he replied that there are plenty of novels in English. I was indignant be- cause my novel would be dif- ferent from everything else. I've had modest success publishing abroad and I won international competitions. There are other Maltese authors who have had similar experiences, but we don't really hear about them. I would argue that we've had a much more difficult time pub- lishing internationally than local writers have when publishing here. For example, in one of the international competitions that I won I was competing against 1,700 submissions. A Maltese author competing locally is up against seven. But while that person's name is splashed all over the media, people like me remain unknown. I do feel that unless I write a novel about Mal- ta and publish it locally, I'm still nobody in the literary circles in this country. This is why I have always felt on the margins. Your novel's protagonist and his friends have their own reasons for writing in English rather than Maltese. What are your reasons? The question is not as com- plicated as some people assume it to be. When I was younger, I read novels in both Maltese and English. Of course, you can run out of children's literature in Maltese fairly quickly whereas you'd need a dozen lifetimes to do so in English. While growing up, I devoured as much English literature as I possibly could. I suppose I find myself more comfortable writing in English because the source language of what inspires me the most is English. I think I'm representative of a particular demographic. Ever since I started teaching creative writing, I've been meeting many young writers who are choosing to write in English. I would ar- gue that they have tremendous talent and that some of them are better than established writers who have been writing in Mal- tese for many years. I think it's a mistake for publishers to miss out on talent and some very sol- id storytelling about Malta. I do envisage this changing in the fu- ture though. I believe that they should introduce an imprint that just publishes Maltese writing in English. I see this as potentially being a very successful venture, but obviously, I'm not a publish- er. Why did you feel compelled to include some Maltese in your novel? Francis Ebejer wrote a novel in the 1960s called The Evil of the King Cockroach. It's a story about a pastizzi-maker but not once does he use the word pas- David Samuel Hudson (Photo: Nathan Camilleri Photography)