A Sunny Place for Shady People

Gepubliceerd door Trinity University Press.

The car bomb assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 shocked the European Union and put the world’s spotlight on an island so small that few knew it was an independent country and even fewer could find it on the map. But Caruana Galizia’s death didn’t come as a surprise to those who lived there.

Ryan Murdock had visions of living a slow-paced island life on the Mediterranean while writing about his experiences, so in 2011 he moved from Canada to Malta. To the casual visitor, Malta is a sleepy place with sun-soaked shorelines and ancient fortified harbors. Murdock imagined it to be an archipelago island of warm weather, gorgeous views, busy cafes, and grilled fish dinners. On the surface, it was.

The six years Murdock spent in Malta revealed an insular culture whose fundamental baseline is amoral familism, a worldview in which any action …

The car bomb assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 shocked the European Union and put the world’s spotlight on an island so small that few knew it was an independent country and even fewer could find it on the map. But Caruana Galizia’s death didn’t come as a surprise to those who lived there.

Ryan Murdock had visions of living a slow-paced island life on the Mediterranean while writing about his experiences, so in 2011 he moved from Canada to Malta. To the casual visitor, Malta is a sleepy place with sun-soaked shorelines and ancient fortified harbors. Murdock imagined it to be an archipelago island of warm weather, gorgeous views, busy cafes, and grilled fish dinners. On the surface, it was.

The six years Murdock spent in Malta revealed an insular culture whose fundamental baseline is amoral familism, a worldview in which any action taken to benefit one’s family or oneself is justifiable, regardless of whether it is legal or ethical. In such a place murder may or may not be wrong, depending on what one thinks of another’s politics. This pervasive perspective created a culture of corruption that rose all the way to the top of the island nation. The office of the prime minister was implicated in Caruana Galizia’s murder, and the investigation continues to reveal a government mired in money laundering, human trafficking, fuel smuggling, and the sale of EU passports to Russian and Middle Eastern oligarchs.

Interspersed with personal narrative, Murdock delves into Malta’s unique geopolitical, cultural, ethnic, and religious history—one that transformed it from a hub of prehistoric rule into a modern society where a powerful cabal of political and business leaders nearly got away with murder.

2 edities

A heeft A Sunny Place for Shady People door Ryan Murdock gerecenseerd

A Sunny Place for Shady People

3 sterren

There is kind of a lot going on in this book. It reads like Ryan Murdock wanted to put together everything he had written and learned about his time living in Malta. The first half is sort of an expat memoir, but angling to be amateur anthropology -- it's mostly generalized cultural observations based on a few interactions, news stories, and a few academic references. This part made me squeamish because he gives it the veneer of authority of researched reportage or popular writing based on scholarship, but it's not. It's essentially anecdotal.

The second part focuses on the work and assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in 2017. Murdock had had some contact with Caruana Galizia and written for her blog, so, after he relocates to Germany, he is drawn into Maltese investigative journalism by others in that community. …

There is kind of a lot going on in this book. It reads like Ryan Murdock wanted to put together everything he had written and learned about his time living in Malta. The first half is sort of an expat memoir, but angling to be amateur anthropology -- it's mostly generalized cultural observations based on a few interactions, news stories, and a few academic references. This part made me squeamish because he gives it the veneer of authority of researched reportage or popular writing based on scholarship, but it's not. It's essentially anecdotal.

The second part focuses on the work and assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in 2017. Murdock had had some contact with Caruana Galizia and written for her blog, so, after he relocates to Germany, he is drawn into Maltese investigative journalism by others in that community. This part of the book devolves into a detailed chronology of events in the investigation of Caruana Galizia's killers. Here Murdock loses the more compelling thread of Malta's culture of corruption and impunity.

Given how difficult it is to find popular writing about contemporary Malta in book form, I found this to be a worthwhile read, but as with all expat perspectives that aren't fully based on rigorous research and well-established journalistic or scholarly methodologies, I would take this with a grain of salt.

Onderwerpen

Malta

Plaatsen

Malta