MarkVella

Vella is also a literary translator, having translated a number of works from Italian to Maltese. In 2023, he won the National Book Prize for Mur Ġibek… Eżerċizzji ta’ Tortura u Seduzzjoni (“Exercises in Torture and Seduction”, Horizons, 2022), his translation of a 2013 novel by Irene Chias.

From a young age, he felt the urge to write, drawn mostly to the hidden and unspoken aspects of Maltese society. This gradually evolved into a wider preoccupation with themes of class, power and history. His literary influences include Juann Mamo, whose sharp satirical lens on society resonated with him, and Immanuel Mifsud, whose exploration of the darker recesses of humanity had a clear impact on his work.

His only novel to date, X’seta’ ġralu lil Kevin Cacciattolo? (‘Whatever happened to Kevin Cacciattolo?’, Merlin Publishers, 2014) stands out as a unique work while still aligning with a broader literary tradition. The narrative unfolds across two particular eras in Maltese history, the politically charged 1980s, marked by unrest and division, and the early 1990s, when the turbulence had subsided but still echoed in the background.

The novel is akin to the Rubin vase optical illusion and makes the reader oscillate between what is revealed and what is concealed. The divide between the figure and the ground is blurred, and meaning is glimpsed in the negative space between the first section of the story involving young Kevin Cacciattolo and the latter part about the journalist who tries to find out what happened to the boy. The mystery of Kevin’s disappearance remains unresolved, leaving readers without a definitive conclusion. The final pages of the novel, however, do contain subtle clues hinting at the boy’s possible fate.

Much of this is shaped by Vella’s interpretation of reality as presented in the novel, a composite of internal and external factors that both underscore and undermine a truth that is in conflict with itself and which cannot be gleaned unless one embraces this paradox. Like the quote from J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye that opens the novel (in which the narrator declares that his only wish is to prevent young boys from jumping off a cliff), Vella seems to be intent on catching fleeting, small truths rather than looking for the grand, absolute one. In fact, one could argue that the real protagonist of the story is not Kevin Cacciattolo but the very question posed in the title. It suggests uncertainty, speculation and multiple possibilities, implying that Kevin’s fate is ultimately open to interpretation. Every truth has its limits, yet the boundaries remain elusive, impossible to define with certainty and understanding. The truth must be constructed not from direct exposition but from the interplay of presence and absence.

Vella’s work stands out because it embraces the idea that truth is never absolute and that as a result reality is fluid and shaped by perception more than by definite answers.