Maltese people Maltese people The Maltese (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to Malta, and identified with the Maltese language. Malta is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Included within the ethnic group defined by the Maltese people are the "Gozitans" (, ) who inhabit Malta's sister island, Gozo. The current Maltese people, characterised by the use of the Maltese language and by Roman Catholicism, are the descendants – through much mixing and hybridisation – of colonists from Sicily and Calabria who repopulated the Maltese islands in the beginning of the second millennium after a two-century lapse of
The Malay Archipelago among other things the inspiration for the character Stein the entomologist. Conrad's assistant Richard Curle wrote that "The Malay Archipelago" was Conrad's favourite bedside book; Conrad refers directly to what he calls Alfred Wallace's famous book on the Malay Archipelago in The Secret Agent. In his short story, "Neil MacAdam", W. Somerset Maugham has the title character read "The Malay Archipelago" while travelling to Borneo, and its influence can be felt in the story's description of that island. More recently, the book has influenced a number of non-fiction books including "The Song of the Dodo" by David Quammen (1997), which