Ir-Re Borg
by Aleks Farrugia
In a couple of weeks’ time, the EU Prize for Literature 2024 laureate and 5 special mentions will be announced. In the running this year is Maltese author Aleks Farrugia, represented by his 2022 novel Ir-Re Borg.
Ir-Re Borg (“King Borg”) is
a political satire whose protagonist is one Mikiel Borg, nicknamed “iċ-Chopper”
(after the ubiquitous bicycle model in vogue in the 1970s and 80s). Mikiel is a
grocer who, frustrated at the lack of empathy shown by the institutions towards
the common citizen, decides to set up his own political party, challenging the two
main political parties of Malta (Labour and Nationalist). After a shaky start
to the campaign, Mikiel’s Monarchical Party of Malta starts to gather
followers, mainly thanks to the help of Mikiel’s daughter, a marketing expert, the
streetwise advice of lawyer Mifsud Maempel and the moral support of Mikiel’s
drinking buddies. At first, Borg comes across as a figure of fun, but as his
success increasingly threatens the main political parties, so the attacks on
him and his family become more personal and violent. Likewise, the novel veers
between the farcical and the tragic, with its tone turning much darker in the
final chapters.
As a nation, Malta often feels frustratingly tribal where politics are concerned. One need only read comments on news portals and social media posts to realise that most people are still swayed by what “their” parties preach. Perhaps surprisingly in this context, Malta has, as a healthy corrective, an established tradition of socio-political literature often tinged with satire – one thinks, for instance, of the stories of Ġuże Ellul Mercer, Juann Mamo’s Ulied in-Nanna Venut fl-Amerka and, much closer to our time, the cult anarchic novel Il-Manifest tal-Killer by Karl Schembri.
Ir-Re Borg joins this tradition. Insofar as it pokes fun at the institutions which Farrugia considers to embody the status quo (State, Opposition, Church), one could even argue that it does not add much that has not been said in previous works (again Schembri comes to mind). What Ir-Re Borg brings to the table is its lampooning of populist leaders and movements. Populism is a phenomenon which has been on the rise in the past couple of decades and this novel captures (and criticizes) the zeitgeist.
In this context, Mikiel Borg comes across as an ambivalent figure. On the one hand, it is evident that sometimes he is a mouthpiece for the author, making impassioned speeches which, frankly, do not sound much like the words of a grocer who has difficulty in navigating the internet. When he is in this idealist vein, Mikiel is admirable, a larger-than-life hero (one presumes, after the author’s social-anarchic heart), a roguish yet Quixote-like figure who “speaks truth to power.
At the same time, the novel exposes the fragile underbelly of populist movements – even when their aims are laudable, they can end up exploited by selfish interests. Here again, Mikiel himself is hardly free from blame. After all, the trigger for his political adventure is the spot of legal trouble he ends up in after he fails to issue VAT receipts.
Ir-Re Borg is a highly readable novel which has several laugh-out loud passages alongside its darker moments. At the same time, it provides much food for thought.
It will be interesting to see how the novel’s humour will translate. Take the novel’s title, for instance. Borg is the most common surname in Malta, and therefore “King Borg” is an oxymoron of sorts. This is a nuance which will be obvious to Maltese readers but not to foreigners. There are also several references to Maltese election procedures and to local politics which non-Maltese readers might not get. But these are details – at a broader level, I believe that this well-written tragi-comedy can strike the right chords (and sound timely warnings) beyond our shores.
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