Transcript (English)

Transcript 5 Islands of the South

in this issue

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ISLANDS OF THE SOUTH

Islands of the South

Snow on Crete

The Cathedral, Palma, Mallorca

The Islands of the North

'...Transcript's twin features, Islands of the North and Islands of the South, provide a unique chronicle of books and writing in places ... from which European culture draws much in the way of myth, romance and its sense of identity.'

Complementing our feature on the 'Islands of the North' in Transcript 2 in which we rode the tide to Iceland, Shetland, Orkney and to Scilly, in Transcript 5 we now turn to the Islands of the South. This the second leg of our island odyssey takes us to Malta, Cyprus, Crete and on to Mallorca.

Political developments in both Malta and Cyprus have brought these two islands into focus in recent months. Malta, home to under half a million people, voted in April to join the European Union. Maltese will soon become the first Semitic language native to a member state. Malta's second official language, English, was the preferred medium of Francis Ebejer in his novels, A Wreath of Maltese Innocents (1958), Wild Spell of Summer (1968) and In the Eye of the Sun (1969) for example, while Immanuel Mifsud and Oliver Friggieri write predominantly in the indigenous tongue. Discover the work of all three in these pages.

Change is afoot is Cyprus where the respective Turkish- and Greek-speaking communities north and south began a process of depolarisation this year as the green line which has separated them became permeable. Niki Marangou describes crossing the green line in 'Nicosia', an article which owes its title to the border town of that name.

Mallorca and Crete have found their way before into Transcript's pages. In our special Catalan issue, we spoke of Mallorca's Antònia Vicens, while The Life of Ismail Ferik pasha by Rhea Galanaki of Crete was featured in Transcript 1. In this issue we present to further women writers, Maria Antònia Oliver (Crineres de foc (1985, Manes of Fire), and Ioanna Karystiani whose novel, The Women of Andros has brought her success in Germany as well as in her native Greece.

Taken together, Transcript's twin features, Islands of the North and Islands of the South, provide a unique chronicle of books and writing in places, some little frequnted, others known to all, from which European culture draws much in the way of myth, romance and its sense of identity.

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