BOOK NOW ON SALE IN MALTA

THROUGH THE MALTA GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

ANNUNTIO VOBIS GAUDIUM MAGNUM

The first English-language book

on homosexuality

in the Maltese archipelago

With well over 152,000 words

280 pages (A4 size) and 130 photographs

Including an excerpt by John Shelby Spong

the Episcopalian Bishop (Emeritus) of Newark (Jersey, USA) 

and an introduction by Dr Graham Willett

of the Australian Centre (the University of Melbourne)

Chetcuti remarks at one point that this book is not a history of queer Malta. He is right - it is, in fact, very much more than that. The author is certainly a historian, and a very good one, but he is also a polemicist, anthropologist, tour guide, lawyer, theologian, agitator, journalist, chronicler, encyclopaedist, literary critic and more.… The result is a work of scholarship that draws upon archival and literary sources, and upon interviews with both ordinary members of the archipelago's queer community (most of whom are anything but ordinary) and with eminent social and political figures. But it is also a lively account of a small but fascinating world - there is gossip and hints and suggestions and allegations here, as there must be in every good community history.

DR GRAHAM WILLETT

Read about Prime Minister Dominic Mintoff's courageous determination to decriminalize homosexuality and how a Nationalist Party Opposition tried every trick in the book to oppose it. 

Reflect on the pathetic 1972 Pastoral Letter of the Maltese bishops, a joyless document for gay men and lesbians that raised more questions than it answered. 

Take a look at how a sixteenth century Maltese Church moved a heretic and a 'sodomite' priest from one religious house to another.

Find out how Maltese law continues to discriminate against gay men and lesbians. 

Peep into the flourishing homosexual subculture of Balzunetta and Strait Street and visit a Strait Street lodging house where sex was right there for the taking. 

Meet the drag queens who entertained British servicemen, Rabat's "gang of homosexuals" and the daring Wembley Store Boys. 

Read about the beats and some of Malta's gay and lesbian bars of yesteryear. 

Enjoy a bottle party and be part of Rabat's "mock weddings". 

Locate Malta's own Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Introduce yourself to some noted homosexuals, from overseas visitors and local politicians to members of the  nobility and holy homos. 

Discover some of Malta's and Gozo's authors who wrote about homosexuality. 

Sit back and enjoy the humour of Maltese gay speech and commit to memory a very gay "prayer to Saint Nicholas". 

Follow the formation of various gay and lesbian groups.

Read what Spong and Chetcuti have to say about St Paul and St George Preca and wonder if Malta's first and second fathers in faith had more in common with each other than their love of God.

"a confronting, hard-hitting and scholarly study with occasional and unavoidable lapses into humour"

"a book that puts on show and pays tribute

to the resilience and courage

of gay men and lesbians in the Maltese archipelago."

    

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