LesFaineants Dans la Vallee Fertile

Cossery, Albert

French & European Pubns

Three friends in a small Egyptian city celebrate idleness, elegance, and joie de vivre. Summoned home to Egypt after a long European debauch (disguised as “study”), our hero Teymour―in the opening line of A Splendid Conspiracy―is feeling “as unlucky as a flea on a bald man’s head.” Poor Teymour sits forlorn in a provincial café, a far cry from his beloved Paris. Two old friends, however, rescue him. They applaud his phony diploma as perfect in “a world where everything is false” and they draw him into their hedonistic rounds as gentlemen of leisure. Life, they explain, “while essentially pointless is extremely interesting.” The small city may seem tedious, but there are women to seduce, powerful men to tease, and also strange events: rich notables are disappearing. Eyeing the machinations of our three pleasure seekers and nervous about the missing rich men, the authorities soon see―in complex schemes to bed young girls―signs of political conspiracies. The three young men, although mistaken for terrorists, enjoy freedom, wit, and romance. After all, though “not every man is capable of appreciating what is around him,” the conspirators in pleasure certainly do.

A Splendid Conspiracy

Literature & Fiction

Literary

New Directions

A delightful, deeply funny novel about the triumph of the perfect prankster ― an elegant gentleman pickpocket in Cairo. His eyes “shine with a glimmer of perpetual amusement”; his sartorial taste is impeccable; Ossama is “a thief, not a legitimated thief, such as a minister, banker, or real-estate developer; he is a modest thief.” He knows “that by dressing with the same elegance as the licensed robbers of the people, he could elude the mistrustful gaze of the police,” and so he glides lazily around the cafe´s of Cairo, seeking his prey. His country may be a disaster, but he’s a hedonist convinced that “nothing on this earth is tragic for an intelligent man.” One fat victim (“everything about him oozed opulence and theft on a grand scale”) is relieved of his crocodile wallet. In it Ossama finds not just a gratifying amount of cash, but also a letter ― a letter from the Ministry of Public Works, cutting off its ties to the fat man. A source of rich bribes heretofore, the fat man is now too hot to handle; he’s a fabulously wealthy real-estate developer, lately much in the news because one of his cheap buildings has just collapsed, killing 50 tenants. Ossama “by some divine decree has become the repository of a scandal” of epic proportions. And so he decides he must act. . . . Among the books to be treasured by the utterly singular Albert Cossery, his last, hilarious novel, The Colors of Infamy, is a particular jewel.

The Colors of Infamy (New Directions Paperbook)

A portrait of a family of proud layabouts who avoid work and sleep all day by the Egyptian writer often referred to as "the Voltaire of the Nile"Laziness in the Fertile Valley is Albert Cossery’s biting social satire about a father, his three sons, and their uncle ― slackers one and all. One brother has been sleeping for almost seven years, waking only to use the bathroom and eat a meal. Another savagely defends the household from women. Serag, the youngest, is the only member of the family interested in getting a job. But even he ― try as he might ― has a hard time resisting the call of laziness.

Laziness in the Fertile Valley

Humor & Satire

Who are the jokers?
The jokers are the government, and the biggest joker of all is the governor, a bug-eyed, strutting, rapacious character of unequaled incompetence who presides over the nameless Middle Eastern city where this effervescent comedy by Albert Cossery is set.
The jokers are also the revolutionaries, no less bumbling and no less infatuated with the trappings of power than the government they oppose.
And the jokers are Karim, Omar, Heykal, Urfy, and their friends, free spirits who see the other jokers for the jokers they are and have cooked up a sophisticated and, most important, foolproof plan to enliven public life with a dash of subversive humor.
The joke is on them all.

The Jokers (New York Review Books Classics)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

NYRB Classics

Early in Proud Beggars, a brutal and motiveless murder is committed in a Cairo brothel. But the real mystery at the heart of Albert Cossery’s wry black comedy is not the cause of this death but the paradoxical richness to be found in even the most materially impoverished life. Chief among Cossery’s proud beggars is Gohar, a former professor turned whorehouse accountant, hashish aficionado, and street philosopher. Such is his native charm that he has accumulated a small coterie that includes Yeghen, a rhapsodic poet and drug dealer, and El Kordi, an ineffectual clerk and would-be revolutionary who dreams of rescuing a consumptive prostitute. The police investigator Nour El Dine, harboring a dark secret of his own, suspects all three of the murder but finds himself captivated by their warm good humor. How is it that they live amid degrading poverty, yet possess a joie de vivre that even the most assiduous forces of state cannot suppress? Do they, despite their rejection of social norms and all ambition, hold the secret of contentment? And so this short novel, considered one of Cossery’s masterpieces, is at once biting social commentary, police procedural, and a mischievous delight in its own right.

Proud Beggars (New York Review Books Classics)

Book Description Les deux volumes des oeuvres complètes d'Albert Cossery mettent en lumière le magnifique talent et l'évidente cohérence des textes du grand écrivain égyptien de langue française. From the Back Cover Albert Cossery, écrivain égyptien de langue française, est né au Caire en 1913. Après avoir fréquenté les écoles françaises du Caire, il effectue à dix-sept ans son premier voyage à Paris pour terminer ses études. À vingt-sept ans, il publie son premier livre : Les hommes oubliés de Dieu. En 1990, il a obtenu le Grand Prix de la Francophonie pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre. Les deux volumes des oeuvres complètes d'Albert Cossery mettent en lumière le magnifique talent et l'évidente cohérence des textes de cet écrivain.

Œuvres complètes (1)

JOELLE LOSFELD

Les affamés ne rêvent que de pain/Danger de la fantaisie

Genre Fiction

Фоліо

Les Hommes oubliés de Dieu - Classiques et Contemporains

Classics

MAGNARD

LES COULEURS DE L'INFAMIE

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Books by Cossery, Albert