COVER COMING SOON !
Ryan Falzon
YOU KNOW THE SUN BOTHERS ME
Translated from Maltese by Joe Gatt
MALTA
ISBN: 978-1-917544-08-5
Page Length: c320 pages
Release Date: June 2026
Love, lust, adulthood and an ancient Fiat in one long hot Maltese summer
School’s out for summer, and for our unnamed narrator, that means three months away from his physics high school students to tinker with his ancient Fiat 131 and fret about his all-consuming obsession: Sarah, a tempestuous artist he met online. They sleep together, they text obsessively, but as July’s barbecues and boat trips segue into August’s festi, their intimate moments always reset into platonic disappointment, and she increasingly ghosts him in favour of an ever-changing group of new besties.
A sensation on its home island, this book gives poignant voice to a regular guy in his early thirties, trying to get a grip on love, life and growing up, and it paints a high-octane portrait of what it means to live in the hedonistic, overcrowded, workaholic, claustrophobic, contradictory mind-blast that is Malta.
You Know The Sun Bothers Me was shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Prize and the author won Malta’s National Book Prize for Best emerging Author in 2024. It is the winner of a PEN Translates award.
“A powerfully idiomatic, warts-and-all vision of contemporary Malta, especially that which millennials experience.”
ALEX VELLA GERA, THE MALTESE READER
“The only novel an author has to writ before they can retire for the rest of their lives. It captures the spirit of the times.”
MARK VELLA
“Falzon’s novel captures the millennial and Gen Z experience against the backdrop of a scorching Maltese summer. Vintage cars, excessive drinking and moral ambiguity frame the story.”
THE TIMES OF MALTA
“From the very first page, it puts you in the passenger seat and drives you at breakneck speed through every street, bypass and flyover on the island as it is today.”
LORANNE VELLA
AUTHOR
RYAN FALZON was born in Malta in 1988. He is an artist, author and art educator. His work is often abrasive and playful and he is known for constructing narratives by arranging texts and images in a collage-like fashion. Since 2011, Falzon has published several short pieces and his novel, Sajf (You Know The Sun Bothers Me) has been described as the voice of the Maltese millennial generation
TRANSLATOR
JOE GATT is a writer, translator and editor. After stints in London and Berlin, he now lives in Brussels. In London he was the editor of GSpot magazine and did editorial work for Vogue and The Modern Review. His writing has appeared in Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 1 (Praspar Press), The London Magazine and Antoloġija 1 (Aphroconfuso) as well as publications including The Face, Dazed & Confused and The Guardian. He is co-editor of the Maltese literary journal Aphroconfuso.
PREVIEW:
Coming Soon!
