Where were you in 1968? Chances are, if you were alive and in Malta, you haven’t got the slightest idea. Compared to the bra burning, hallucinating nights and flying barricades abroad, Malta looks like a barren, desolate desert.
And yet, Malta too had its little revolution; it’s black on white, literally, and 40 years down the line there is good reason to write home about it.
Because while the sensational happenings worldwide at the time made Malta fade in comparison, change was indeed happening, and the latest book by literary critic Charles Briffa captures the spirit of tumultuous decade of rage and hope.
Newly published New Wave Literature in Malta tracks the cultural and political currents happening in the crucial year which saw the launch of Moviment Qawmien Letterarju – the varied group of young writers who stood up against traditional values and their reflection in art and literature.
The movement’s first momentous confrontations started just a few months since its launch, having to face acts of censorship at university and at the Manoel Theatre, as well as the Archbishop’s condemnations, as the young writers started claiming their spaces in the books, newspapers and also out in the streets.
“The impressive characteristics of the artistic bloom of the Sixties were unexpectedness, novelty, and a profound identity crisis,” Briffa writes in his brief but analytical study. “These heralded the new wave of literature of that decade in Malta.”
According to Briffa, the writers of the ‘60s generation conducted the much needed rebellion, with their movement serving as a social actor that was in touch with the intellectual and cultural developments abroad while interpreting them in the context of Malta’s newly acquired Independence.
“It was the age when the literati were representing a force that had to be reckoned with, which is nowadays lost,” said author and theatre director Mario Azzopardi, who was himself one of the movement’s protagonists. “Briffa shows how organic and dynamic the movement was in unleashing social and cultural liberation from the web of repression – from religious devotion to sexuality.”

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt