Book review: Quest for the holy platter
Ir-Rumanz tal-Fieres Safran by Alfred Sant Published by Quinque Fiction books in Maltese have grown in number impressively in the past few years, quite a number of them by new authors. An older author who has produced both novels and books of short stories since 1968 is the well-known politician and prolific writer Alfred Sant. He is an author who likes to experiment with different genres of novel, whether historical fiction set in earlier periods or the modern age, or social/erotic novels set in our time. In this new work under review, he is writing a fantasy on a topic very popular in the Middle Ages, one that has occasionally drawn modern writers to it. The Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table have drawn many a filmmaker as well, but the topic greatly associated with these knights, the Holy Grail (or Graal), is perhaps less known to the contemporary reader. The medieval Provençal authors from whom the Holy Grail legend originated called it the Saint Graal in French. This was said to be the cup or bowl in which the biblical Joseph of Arimathea conserved some of the blood shed by Jesus Christ during his passion, an object (real or imaginary) greatly attracting the devotion of...