Aleks Farrugia’s latest novel Camerata! available at Malta Book Festival

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 Valletta Design Cluster and is the second of Aleks Farrugia’s publications 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 mistakes that mark a man’s life.

The novel has already attracted the critics’ attention.

Poet and academic Dr Norbert 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, populated with energetic and lively characters, well-wrought biting dialogues, reflecting the mentalities of corruption, passion and the struggle for truth and justice.”

Critic and lecturer Dr David Aloisio said he considered Camerata! as an “effective exercise of retrospection as much as an opportunity for the readers to reflect on our current social reality.”

Camerata! is sold at the price of €15 and, following the Book Festival, will be available in local bookshops and online from the website skspublishers.com.