The voice of a nation's conscience : Oliver Friggieri's fiction in recent Maltese literature

Abstract

In 1964 Malta acquired its independence from Britain, and since then the individual has been caught up in the whirligig of time. Directly or indirectly, the Maltese have been involved in a whirlpool of political change that greatly affected their role in domestic organization. A postindependence redistribution of the nation's affluence lowered traditional barriers and created psychosocial alterations, so that new attitudes and values resulted from such an experience. The writers caught in the throes of these changes were encouraged toward renewed interest in the conduct and manners of the individual as an essential social factor. The new writers who emerged in the sixties welcomed progress but then implied that change had gone far enough to show new disappointments because so many other things have not been achieved. Maltese life in the seventies and eighties is often depicted as one of dissatisfaction with the shape society was taking, since it was placing the individual in frustrating circumstances. [excerpt]