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Dr Norbert Bugeja, a senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta has recently authored the critical introduction to ‘Tad-Demm u l-Laħ²¹³¾â€™ (Klabb Kotba Maltin 2021), a collection of fourteen short stories by Dr Steve Borg that marks Borg’s debut on Malta’s literary scene. Titled ‘±õ±ô-³Õ³ÜÄ‹i tal-Ilsien-Art: Ftit Ħsibijiet dwar in-Novelli ta’ Steve Borg’, Bugeja’s introduction takes the reader through some of the salient characteristics that mark this new voice in the literature of Malta. 

In his introduction to ‘Tad-Demm u l-Laħ²¹³¾â€™, Bugeja argues that the short stories shaping this collection bring about a creative reconstruction of the affinity between language, territory, urban/rural spaces in the context of postcolonial Malta — a complex relation that is mediated by the distinctive voice of the narrator as it emerges in Borg’s stories. 

Referring to notions and critical approaches to national, regional and communal identification — and beyond — as these emerge in Borg’s short stories, Bugeja discusses the aesthetic-political bind that structures the anxieties and discursive tensions making Borg’s voice a relevant and indeed important one today for the unfolding of the twenty-first-century Maltese short story.

Steve Borg’s writing to date has, particularly through his sequence of research volumes ‘Il-Maltin — ³Òħemilhom, Drawwiethom, Ä °ù²¹ÂáÂá¾±±ð³Ù³ó´Ç³¾â€™, brought to the fore a wealth of documentation, based in ethnographic, historiographic and cultural-studies approaches to the understanding of Malta and its communities, with a view to unearthing and voicing hitherto underexplored stories, individual and communal trajectories. The stories in ‘Tad-Demm u l-Laħ²¹³¾â€™ mark a significant new phase in Borg’s work, now from a creative point of view.

Besides his scholarly publications in the fields of postcolonial and Mediterranean studies, Dr Bugeja is the author, most recently, of a third poetry collection in Maltese, titled ‘Insa li Mhijiex Hawn’ (Klabb Kotba Maltin 2021) as well as the short story ‘³Òħ²¹·É³¾²¹â€™, that has just appeared in the volume titled ’50’ celebrating the fiftieth anniversary since the birth of Klabb Kotba Maltin, and edited by Prof. Ä ´Ç°ùÄ¡ Mallia.