Energy of ‘90s Prague was invigorating, says Maltese writer Alex Vella Gera

Novelist Alex Vella Gera made headlines in his native Malta in 2009 when he found himself in court over a short story deemed obscene by the authorities. The piece had been written several years earlier, during a spell the writer – then in his 20s – spent living in Prague in the second half of the 1990s. Vella Gera has just been back in the Czech capital for the first time since then for a short visit. When he came into our studios, I asked what for him had been the appeal of ‘90s Prague.

Alex Vella Gera, photo: Ian Willoughby

“When I first came to Prague I had no idea that there was such a thing as ‘90s Prague, that something was happening. It was just a place to come to which was cheap, so I could live longer on the money I had saved.

“But when I arrived here there was a certain sense of, I don’t want to say freedom, but a certain sense of – people were making up the rules as they went along, doing their things. That’s what it felt like.

“So there was a feeling of being in a place which is starting afresh. So automatically, you as a person living in that place start to feel that in yourself as well, like you’re starting afresh.

“It’s very liberating. I guess that’s why I came and stayed longer than I had imagined I would.”

Also you were coming from Malta, which is a relatively conservative state, and small.

“Absolutely. Also our culture never had any connections with Czechoslovakia, with Central Europe, at all.

“So everything was new for me here. From the kind of food that people ate, to the architecture, to the mentality. The clothes. It was like a new beginning, literally.”

How did you find the Czech mentality?

“I wasn’t impressed, let’s put it that way. But I probably met the wrong people. Like the women in the supermarkets. The sales women in the supermarkets were terrifying.

“I’d be walking through a potraviny and one of the shop assistants would be following me. To make sure I don’t steal anything. It was very normal that this would happen.

“So yes, at the beginning, that was my relationship with Czech people. It wasn’t a very fair one really, because I didn’t have any real personal relationships. But when I did, then my impressions changed, obviously.”

What were the best things that you found about living here?

Prague, photo: archive of Radio Prague

“[Laughs] The drug consumption. I’m sorry but it was very…”

It was a liberal place here.

“Yeah, it was a liberal place. Also I love walking and Prague as a city is so conducive to wanting to walk and walk. My lasting memories are walking in the streets of Prague, really – that’s what I look back on most fondly.”

Do you think that your time spent here shaped you in any way?

“Hugely. Very, very much. I arrived here when I was 22 years old. My brain was still of a teenager.

“I grew up in Prague. I became an adult. I had my first long, stable relationship with a woman here. I learned how to be independent. I learned how to travel here.

“I discovered my own language here, which is a bit strange. In Malta I used to speak English more than Maltese, and when I came to Prague I started to discover my own language. I started to write in Maltese. So yes, Prague was hugely influential on me.”

Why did you leave?

“I had done my time. It was time to move on. Also I felt that Malta was calling me back. I needed to return and start to build a life in my own country. I didn’t feel the motivation to stay in Prague.”

You got in trouble with the law in Malta in 2009 over a short story – you were accused of breaching the law on obscenity. Was that a story that you wrote in Prague? And what was it about?

“Yes, it was written in Prague, in 1996. It was basically a first-person narrative about a sex-crazed Maltese man, very macho, a Mediterranean type. And he’s just describing his sexual conquests, in very sexist terms.

“The main reason I wrote that story and why I decided to have it published when I did, 13 years after I wrote it, was a very local Maltese reason.

Photo: Merlin Publishers

“Maltese literature was very conservative. It has changed now, but back then it still was. There were a lot of taboos which were never addressed. A lot of euphemisms were used in Maltese literature.

“And I wanted to go totally against that – that’s why I got into trouble.”

It seemed to me reading about it at the time that Malta was kind of going through its Lady Chatterley’s Lover moment, but 50 years after the UK.

“Yes, you are right. In fact in my court case I had to bring up a lot of case studies, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and other books which had a similar brush with the law, if we could say that.”

What was the upshot of the whole legal situation?

“Legally, I won the case. I won the appeal as well. I became a bit of a hero for a short while in Malta.

“But culturally I’m not sure anything really changed. Because no-one else has tried to write and publish something similar. No-one else has tried to test the law, to see if it will again attack the artist. So it’s kind of in the air really.”

Was that short story informed in some way by your living in Prague? Or was it just coincidence?

“I think it was informed by me in Prague. In the sense, as I told you before, there was the sense of liberation, and as I said I started to rediscover my language and started to write in Maltese.

“Partly because I was influenced by what I saw around me. Czechs are proud of their heritage, of their literature, of their cinema. Which in Malta is unknown – it’s diametrically opposite to that.

“In a way I wanted to be like the Czechs, but Maltese. So I kind of reinvented myself, in that way.

“So yes, writing a story like that was very much influenced by living here. If I still lived in Malta perhaps I would have written it as well, but there was a certain energy… I was invigorated by being here.”

I believe there is some Czech connection with one of your novels?

“Yes, it had been on my mind… when I was still living here, I always pictured this Maltese couple, a bit naïve, who are on their honeymoon in Prague and get caught up in something very sinister that’s happening in the city.

“Because Prague as a city – I don’t know now, because I don’t live here – but in the past it always had this sinister edge to it, a kind of underground happening which could be quite scary, really.

“So yes, one of my novels, called L-Antipodi, begins with this couple… well the husband gets kidnapped, basically, and disappears off the face of the earth [laughs].”

I’ve known you since the time you lived in Prague and off all my friends you’re one of the biggest culture vultures and consumers of all kinds of art. Are there any particular Czech writers that you admire, for instance?

“I’m going to say Kafka, although I know he’s not really considered a Czech writer, but he was definitely informed by Prague, he was very much influenced by this city. That’s the obvious choice.

“Hrabal. I greatly admire Hrabal. Although I haven’t read Czech writers for quite a while because after I left 15 years ago I didn’t really look back. Prague was in my past…

“Čapek. Hašek, obviously. Švejk is a brilliant, brilliant book. I read it in English, OK, but still. Škvorecký. And others.

“Czech cinema perhaps even more. This morning I woke up thinking of a Czech film called Úcho, The Ear, by Karel Kachyňa.

It’s a kind of communist era paranoia movie about a couple living in a villa.

“Yes. He has been promoted and he’s interpreting his promotion as being his downfall, really. That’s the first step towards him losing his job.”

I guess that movie was from the Prague Spring era? It must have been…

“I think it was just made just after the Russians came, in 1969. It was released in 1970 but it was immediately banned. It only saw the light of day again after the Velvet Revolution.

“I saw it a few years ago for the first time. It’s so powerful. The experience of that film was so visceral that it became my favourite Czech film.”

Psí vojáci, photo: archive of the band

What about music – any favourites?

“When I lived in Prague I was a big fan of Psí vojáci. I think I saw them 15, 20 times. Maybe I’m exaggerating – 10 times, at least. I really, really liked that band.”

Did you have some way of understanding the lyrics? Or what was the connection?

“No. The only lyric I ever understood was Marilyn Monroe. They had a song called Marilyn Monroe [laughs]. That was the only two words I understood.

“The music was so good you didn’t really need to understand the words. Filip Topol was a very impressive frontman, the way he played piano. They were just a great, great band, by international standards. They were so, so good.”

You’re back in Prague for a few days after 15 years. How does it feel being back? What are your impressions?

“Just before I came to the studio I went to see a place where I lived right at the beginning when I arrived in Prague, back in 1995. What I realised… I knew this already intellectually, but when you visit a place where you once lived it becomes an emotional reality…

“I realised that your memories of a city, of a place you once lived in, are not of the place itself – they’re of you in that place. It’s your projection of the place.

“So walking through Prague now is like walking through me, through myself, back then. To be honest, I don’t feel anything. I feel very numb. So many things have happened in my life since then, there isn’t even any nostalgia.

“Even when I see places and I go, oh, I remember this place, or this used to be a potraviny and now it’s a shoe shop, for instance, there isn’t any emotion in these observations. I’ve left it so far behind me.

“But I’m really glad I came back, though. Because I’d been telling myself I should revisit Prague for years and years, so it had to happen.

“It makes you realise that life is so temporary. You come and you go and the buildings remain but you’re just gone, you know.”