Clare Azzopardi - Castillo

After the death of her father, Amanda Barbara visits her long-estranged mother in the matter of the inheritance, only to have to face the fact that she not only abandoned her at the time, but also has other dark spots in her past: she almost casually admits to her daughter that she committed two murders decades earlier. committed and does not feel the slightest guilt about them.

The character of the deceased Cathy K. Penza brings a radical twist to the story, who embodies the "cool aunt" for Amanda and, incidentally, is a celebrated writer throughout Malta for her novels about the detective Castillo. The details of the Castillo novels written in the 1980s, fraught with explosions and corruption, play an important role in the book, masterfully contrasting Amanda's personal story.

Through the steps of truths and half-truths, irresolvable paradoxes and conflicting points of view, the novel takes us back to the world of endemic corruption and exalted violence of the 1980s.

CLARE AZZOPARDI (1977) is a Maltese writer, head of the Maltese Institute of Linguistics at the University of Malta, whose works have won numerous literary awards. He won the National Literary Award twice, and his novel Castillo was recognized with the European Union Literary Award. As an active member of Inizjamed, an organization dedicated to the promotion of literature, he participated in the organization of many literary festivals and workshops, often in collaboration with LAF (Literature Across Frontiers). He writes in Maltese, but his short stories and novels have now been published in many languages.

PÉTER VÁRADI (1976) translator, editor, poet. He has published two volumes of his own, and is the translator of about thirty volumes of fiction, humanities and social sciences. He defended his doctorate at ELTE's Department of Aesthetics.