Translated by Irene Mangion

This award-winning novel, originally written in Maltese, depicts, in a style of its own, the interplay between imagination and reality that takes place in the troubled mind of an art critic obsessed with paintings by Rembrandt, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. And the symphonies of Mahler.

All this manifests itself in the protagonist’s relentless pursuit of an attractively lively woman.
But the novel tells us more than just that.

The Other Face, described as a thriller of the subconscious, and one of the best novels to have been written in Maltese in the past years, retains the original intriguing, rhythmical use of words and phrasing in the translated version by Irene Mangion.

The Maltese version of this book ‘Il-Wiċċ l-Ieħor’ has won the 2020 Malta National Book prize for Best Novel