Lou Drofenik is not a new name in the Maltese literary scene. A Maltese-Australian author based in Melbourne, Drofenik, who writes in English, started by self-publishing her first novel Birds of Passage in 2005 and so far has written eight novels.

The Confectioner’s Daughter is Drofenik’s first novel to be published by Horizons, a relatively new and upcoming Maltese publisher. Horizons’ foresight served it well. The Confectioner’s Daughter won the National Book Prize for novels published in 2016. This is the first time a novel written in English has won the Prize since the National Book Council introduced the bilingual rule putting both English and Maltese, as State official languages, on an equivalent platform.

Winning a prize in the novels category against competition by renowned authors such as Immanuel Mifsud makes the recognition to Drofenik even more prestigious and rightly so. Lou Drofenik had already received two National Book Prizes for her novels, one in 2008 with In Search of Carmen Caruana and another one in 2011 with Cast The Long Shadow. She was twice awarded the Australian North Central Literary Award for Cloves and Bitter Almonds and Beloved Convict.

Although Drofenik’s position as the best English-writing Maltese novelist was practically undisputed given the lack of Maltese literature in English, the fact that she has proved her mastery alongside other renowned Maltese authors, irrespective of the language used, means that her place in the Maltese literary canon is assured. Here we are speaking of undoubtedly one of the most significant contemporary Maltese writers.

The novel is lucid, gripping, dynamic and reads like a film by Giuseppe Tornatore. It is set in early 20th century Malta, where the patriarchal establishment rules over women with overwhelming force, the voice of women is often muffled and women tend to keep to themselves.

In a small village environment which can easily turn hostile and violent towards independent women who make choices outside of the norm, the rags-to-riches success of a poor baker turned confectioner who inherits a small bakery from her deceased father is welcomed by her fellow villagers with both envy and respect. Her younger Sicilian husband, whom she married after bribing a priest to marry them off quickly after having conceived his child, is murdered leaving Ġuditta, the confectioner, alone to run her business and bring up her child.

The good side of Malta comes to light when friends and even unknown strangers empathise with her and come forward to help her. As the daughter of the strong-willed Ġuditta grows in the stifling patriarchal environment of the village, a sense of freedom and independence grows with her. Licia, the confectioner’s daughter, leaves the island for greener pastures only to find new challenges of a different kind, yet of a similar nature.

The story shows Malta in its many different aspects. The ugly, superstitious, overtly zealous and religious, male-centred society, while on the other hand there is also love, independence, solidarity and social justice. Women are at the centre of the story and throughout the novel face great challenges, making the theme of women’s emancipation strongly present in both the background and foreground of the story.

As the story spans through generations we see the characters evolve and grow along with their changing historical environment providing a socio-historical background to Maltese society from the eyes of female characters. Drofenik, a Maltese emigrant who went to Australia in the 1960s, during the decade in which tens of thousands of Maltese left the islands in search for a better life, knows very well the great challenges faced by Maltese women back then.

In her unpublished paper A Moment of Rebellion, Drofenik writes that her decision to immigrate to Australia was driven by her desire to own her life; to recreate herself while seeking liberation from the clutches of old prescribed customs which her home society had long imposed on her. Similarly, Licia, who leaves Malta for good, recreates her life from scratch – a daunting and challenging task in comparison to staying in Malta in the comfort and security of her mother’s home.

The characters of Licia and Ġuditta are a rare class of female characters in Maltese literature: strong-willed, independent and defiant. To many young women today who may still experience the stifling patriarchal nature of Maltese society, Licia and Ġuditta may be inspirational characters. Female heroes are rare in the Maltese literary scene, but they are also so in literature all over the world.

Lou Drofenik’s National Book Prize for The Confectioner’s Daughter as the best Maltese novel in 2016 has coincided with the global debate on women’s rights, sparked by the outcry over sexual abuse and misconduct on actresses in Hollywood by powerful men in the film industry. Drofenik may be writing about stories which are set in the past, but she may also be writing about many traits which are still with us to their very day. With The Confectioner’s Daughter, Drofenik may have written not only a historical novel, but a political manifesto for the liberation of women.

When the government released its sloppy and badly-drafted Media and Defamation Bill back in February the lobby for freedom of speech and expression felt betrayed. The media bill proposed to double civil libel fines and failed to remove criminal libel from the list of indictable offences.

The publication of stories based on unsubstantiated claims, appearing both online and in the press at around the same time, was deemed as grounds enough by a faction of government supporters to endorse a bill which aimed to stifle free speech even further than before.

We were worried and rightly so.

The Front against Censorship was quick to react. We launched a campaign of strong opposition to the bill. We analysed the bill thoroughly and presented clear-cut counter-proposals. The government responded by inviting us for talks. The talks were very intensive and it took some time until the government consented to our proposed changes to the bill, a demanding exercise in which I was helped by my colleagues Ingram Bondin and Andrew Sciberras.

It is only right that the government should be praised for accepting most of our proposals, which included the universalisation of the right of protection of sources (instead of having it restricted solely to those in the media register), the complete abolition of criminal libel, the removal of colonial vilification laws related to the President and the Flag of the Republic, the consolidation of a single-publication rule, the removal of the obligation for members of the media to register with the proposed media register and the capping of civil libel damages to their current level. It is worth mentioning that the government was initially adamant that it would double civil libel damages, but now these will not be increased and they will remain at the current level.

This bill is partly a copy from the UK defamation Act which is a good model to follow as long as you cap the damages, and tweak and modify several other points. Admittedly, the government didn’t accept all our proposals, some of which were very technical, but we can safely say that this bill is an important progressive step forward for the consolidation of the right of freedom of speech in our country.

This bill will also help induce a safer environment for journalists since it gives the explicit message that journalists and writers have the right to criticise and investigate incisively with greater freedom than before. Thanks to the single-publication rule, one can’t open a libel case on each and every re-publication of a story – there can only be one case for every story, irrespective how many times this story has been published.

Libel laws have always been used by the strong and powerful to clamp down on criticism.

Big companies and politicians have repeatedly used libel laws in order to stop journalists trying to investigate cases of corporate misconduct.

This new legislation will make it even more difficult for the strong and powerful to silence criticism or journalistic investigation.

Now it is up to the media editors to step in and put forward their position and proposals when the bill goes to the second reading and more amendments may be made.

The Labour government has as of now been consistent in dismantling our censorship laws and it is continuing to do so with the help of stakeholders. We should insist that it does not lose track of this consistent progress.

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/82306/press_law_reform_is_here_lets_strengthen_this_bill#.Whp7k981snQ

Recently, a film producer who was awarded a PBS and Arts Council grant of €100,000 to produce a dramatic film about Carmelo Borg Pisani, went on record saying that we need to tell the story of Carmelo Borg Pisani with an “open mind”. The film producer will be using public funds to create a dramatic film on Borg Pisani based on a poorly-researched book by Laurence Mizzi, which portrays Borg Pisani as an admirable person with views too romantic to be dangerous.

In the 1940s, as Jews, Russians and Europeans alike were forced into a war not of their own making by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the victims of war did not have the privilege to think about Nazis and Fascists with an open mind. With Europe under the yoke of Nazi Germany and its fascist allies, Jews were faced with genocide on an industrial scale and Western Russians had to fight against the threat of military annihilation. Historical revisionism cannot be more grating and objectionable as when it attempts to relieve the guilt from perpetrators of some of the most horrible crimes in history.

It is beyond shameful and outrageous that the Arts Council and PBS should award such a coveted grant to a project of historical revisionism. Borg Pisani was a fascist and a traitor whose decision to spy on Malta for the Italians during the height of the Second World War was taken on by him in full conviction of his perverse and fascist beliefs. The facts are well known and presenting them otherwise for the sake of being “open minded” is outright dishonesty. In PBS’s statement, made by the chairman of the adjudication board which awarded the grant, Tony Cassar Darien, not even once was it mentioned that Borg Pisani was a fascist.

These are indeed the worst of times for public broadcasting in Malta. From the Kim Kardashian Reality-TV clone show of Benjamin Camilleri (apparently, Ben Camille as he describes himself), to prime time Xarabank waging outright war on the education system, and publicly-funded films revising the history of noted fascists and convicted traitors, PBS has reached a level of decadence unprecedented even by our abysmal standards. Yet, the Minister of Culture, Owen Bonnici, seems unperturbed by all this. He seems to share those same populist views that Peppi Azzopardi of Xarabank fame publicly espouses: since we have freedom of speech anything may go on the public broadcaster.

The point of having a public broadcaster is to provide citizens with a service of news, information, education and culture. A public broadcaster should not be used with the sole aim of entertaining the masses, and such kind of thinking is so perverse that it may theoretically justify the broadcasting of hardcore pornography. The populist views upheld by Peppi Azzopardi and his likes are actually in tune with the idea of public broadcasting under dictatorships. It is under dictatorships that public broadcasting is used to broadcast safe and brainless entertainment, shallow programming with little or no relevant information at all, puerile and insular political debates, and dramatic art with a revisionist agenda. Here in Malta we have a public broadcaster which would make a tin-pot South East Asian dictator proud.

The malaise afflicting the public broadcaster is no different from the blight that has befallen the Arts Council and the Valletta 18 Foundation. The motivation underpinning their allocation of funds does not seem to emerge from an informed vision. Decisions are not being made on the basis of sound educational and cultural principles, but simply on the need to support the vanity projects of friends and allies of politicians and officials in power. And this is why incompetent people are being appointed to high positions within important State institutions by the Ministry of Culture or by the appointees of the minister.

Take for example the adjudication board which granted the money to produce the Carmelo Borg Pisani film. It was composed of Audrey Harrison, an ex-MEPA employee who was then employed at the Film Commission by the Labour government and who appears on IMDB as an actress in one feature film; Anthony Attard, who is the executive director of the Arts Council and has background in theatre; and a priest called Joseph Henry Abela, who apparently has published a book on how people should live their lives. The chairman of the adjudication board, Tony Cassar Darien, is a playwright who writes slapstick drama, the kind you would see and read without needing the help of any grey matter to digest it. Basically, no one on the adjudication board knows jack about cinema and history and yet these people had the authority to grant the €100,000 fund. Insane.

All this is happening as we are heading toward the year when Valletta will be honoured with the title of Capital City of Culture. With a public broadcaster in shambles and cultural institutions under the management of incompetent people, V18 will come and go and will leave no tangible heritage.

The government should realise that nobody cares about the vanity projects of a couple of airheads. Culture can only be strengthened in the long term if we provide capital expenditure to invest in the cultural infrastructure, including the public broadcaster. Recurrent expenditure will come and go, but speaking about these concepts to many officials in PBS and other cultural entities is like speaking Cantonese to a Maltese who can hardly speak and write in Maltese, let alone Cantonese.

The Minister of Culture should sit back, take a deep breath and begin his reality check. This state of shambles cannot go on forever and if everybody in the culture industry, except for the minister’s cronies, are saying the same thing, then something is surely amiss. After all, the Labour Party has been elected into office to do better than this.

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/79523/worst_of_times_for_public_broadcasting#.WYlVV59NwnR

The recently released Arts Council and the National Statistics Office Cultural Participation Survey shows a 44% figure for persons who have read at least one whole book during the last 12 months. The survey on cultural participation is based on a sample of around 1,000 positive replies approximately divided per capita, according to Malta’s regions. The survey is on whether people have read a book, went to the cinema or a film-screening, listen to the radio, visited an art gallery, watched a play or engaged in these same cultural activities and others, including parish feasts.

This survey is a commendable yet rare exercise. Scientific surveys on culture are always welcome and Etienne Caruana at NSO, who for years has coordinated cultural statistics, should be commended for his work. Admittedly, public functionaries in education and culture have to work with a dearth of statistical data and scientific studies and the work of professionals like Caruana should be intensified and extended both at a central level, meaning at NSO, and in ministries and public entities. Since the Cultural Participation Survey is a rare exercise, it is even more important to commission other surveys on culture to obtain the best scientific result possible. One can easily cast doubts on aspects of the results of a survey if it stands alone, without being corroborated with other surveys on the same subject.

I would not be so fast as to jump to pessimistic conclusions on the basis of the 44% figure. As a matter of fact, I have some doubts about its accuracy, although I might be proved wrong if more surveys are commissioned and they all corroborate the same figure. Still, the Eurobarometer survey of 2013 had marked a 55% readership rate of books, recording an increase of 10% from the 2007 figure. The increasing readership rate was then corroborated with an increasing trend in book consumption and imports. Thus, overall we had very good reasons why to be optimistic of readership rates and book consumption.

The new 44% figure does not decrease my optimism. One has to admit that the same Cultural Participation Survey gives reasons to be optimistic. The survey indicates that it is the young who form the greatest chunk of the reading population. If the young generation is more likely to read books than their progenitors, then an upward trend in readership rates could be in the offing. This argument can be challenged by the fact that once young people have children, they might abandon many of their activities.

We also still have to wait to see the full benefits of the massive literacy and reading campaigns which have been initiated at a primary school level by the previous Labour administration. The National Book Council has played a small and yet crucial role in this strategy by giving out free book tokens to school children who attend the Book Festival in November and ensuring that the Festival inspires a positive outlook to reading and books in children and young teenagers.

School and class libraries are also being filled to the brim with books. The raison d’etre behind this drive is simple: catch them when they are young. Promoting the importance of reading and books to the general public is still a government priority and this is how the National Book Council comes into the formula. This is why under my chairmanship, the Book Council has spent considerable sums of its budgets in both print and online media, TV programmes, and even adverts and marketing drives on social media.

The survey also gives us the possibility to ask more questions and this is another reason why more detailed surveys are needed. Assuming both the Eurobarometer and the Cultural Participation are accurate, is there a chunk of readers who may read books intermittently according to what books are published? Fifty Shades of Grey might be a case a point.

If one were to assume this survey is accurate, then surely this should serve as a wake-up call for the government to increase exponentially the budget for the National Book Council. Under the previous Nationalist administrations, the book industry was all but ignored on a policy level, with the result that most of the cultural funding went to theatre, music and other cultural sectors, leaving the book sector completely out. Catching up with lost time and opportunity is difficult when the priorities had been set before one comes to office. Moving funds from one sector to another is also a bone of contention and a political issue, so any funding we receive is over and above the funding which has already been previously prioritised by government policy.

Books are not just a cultural segment offering enjoyment and an experience. Books are a pre-requisite for the educational and intellectual development of a society. A low readership rate should be a wake-up call for a government to pool its resources and step up its efforts in education, literacy and book promotion.

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/78501/maltas_low_readership_is_a_wakeup_call_for_the_government#.WVO4xh9NwnR