[LISTEN] Amina by Antoinette Borg

Amina is a 12-year-old girl who is a Maths prodigy. She lives on patterns, rules, diagrams. She sees life in figures. If you’re standing next to her, her mind is calculating how far away you are in meters and centimetres. She wins a prestigious place in a national six-week Maths-camp. However, it turns out that she has a bigger mystery than a Maths problem to solve – and she must set off on an adventure which will take her all the way to it-Torri l-Aħmar in Mellieħa. Amina is Merlin Publishers’ first novel featuring a black Maltese protagonist.

About the author

Antoinette Borg (b. 1973) left her twenty-year business advisory career to pursue her passion for writing. In 2016 she published her first novel, Fittixni, which went on to win the Terramaxka National Book Prize in the 13-16 years category. Her second YA novel (Ri)ġenerazzjoni won the Literary Contest of Novels for Youth and was published in 2018. Antoinette received the National Book Council’s Best Emerging Author award for 2018, and her third novel for youths, Amina, won her the 2019 National Book Prize for adolescents. She has just co-authored her latest work Innuendo (Merlin Publishers, 2019), consisting of 12 short-stories for adults.

About the reader

Rachelle Deguara is a singer known by her stage name REA. She likes to learn about anything, is involved in political activism and runs her own small enterprise. She currently conducts a radio programme on Maltese Literature.