Albert Cossery

Albert Cossery
Born	(1913-11-03)November 3, 1913 Cairo, Egypt
Died	June 22, 2008(2008-06-22) (aged 94) Paris, France
Occupation	Writer
Language	French
Nationality	French

Albert Cossery (November 3, 1913 – June 22, 2008) was an Egyptian-born French writer of Greek Orthodox Syrian and Lebanese descent, born in Cairo.

Life

Son of small property owners in Cairo, at the age of 17, inspired by reading Honoré de Balzac, Albert Cossery ( Arabic: البرت قصيري) emigrated to Paris. He came there to continue his studies which he never did to devote himself to, writing and settled permanently in the French capital in 1945, where he lived until his death in 2008.

In 60 years he only wrote eight novels, in accordance with his philosophy of life in which "laziness" is not a vice but a form of contemplation and meditation. In his own words: "So much beauty in the world, so few eyes to see it." At the age of 27 he published his first book, Les hommes oubliés de Dieu ("Men God Forgot"). During his literary career he became close friend of other writers and artists such as Lawrence Durrell, Albert Camus, Jean Genet and Giacometti.

Cossery died on June 22, 2008, aged 94.

Work

His books, which always take place in Egypt or other Arab countries, portray the contrast between poverty and wealth, the powerful and the powerless, in a witty although dramatic way. His writing mocks vanity and the narrowness of materialism and his principal characters are mainly vangrants, thieves or dandies that subvert the order of an unfair society. Often auto-biographical characters, like Teymour, the hero of the novel Un complot de saltimbanques, a young man that forges a diploma of chemical engineer after a life of enjoyment and lust abroad instead of study and gets back to his home town and enters in an unexpected intringue against the authorities with his dandy friends. He is considered by some to be the last genuine "anarchist" or free thinking writer of western culture by his humorous and provocative although lucid and profound view of human relations and society. His writing style does not submit to an academic or experimental approach which makes him a vivid, catchy storyteller, without the boredom nor artificial ambiguity of some classical (which he is) or avantgarde writers. The sageness of his works are monuments to the freedom of being and thought against materialism, the contemporary obsession with consumption and productivity, the arrogance and abuse of authority, the vanity of social formalities and the injustice of the wealthy towards the poor.

Some of his books translated in English are Men God Forgot (first translated by Harold Edwards of Faruk University, Alexandria, Egypt, not by Henry Miller, whose note on Cossery appeared on a later 1963 City Lights Books edition, and published in the USA in 1946 by George Leite's Circle Editions of Berkeley), The House of Certain Death (New Directions, 1949), The Lazy Ones (New Directions, 1952) and Proud Beggars (Black Sparrow Press, 1981).

In 1990 Cossery was awarded the Grand Prix de La Francophonie de l´Académie française and in 2005 the Grand Prix Poncetton de la SGDL.

On May 25, 2010, two more of Cossery's novels were published in English translation: Alyson Waters' A Splendid Conspiracy (New Directions) and Anna Moschovakis' Violence and Derision (NYRB Classics).

Novels

• Les hommes oubliés de Dieu / Men God Forgot (1940)
• La maison de la mort certaine / The House of Certain Death (1944)
• Les fainéants dans la vallée fertile / The Lazy Ones (1948)
• Mendiants et Orgueilleux (1955) / Proud Beggars, translation by Thomas W. Cushing and edited by Alyson Waters, New York Review Books (2011) ISBN 1-59017-442-9
• La violence et la dérision / Violence and Derision, also called The Jokers, translation by Anna Moschovakis, New York Review Books (2010) ISBN 1-59017-325-2
• Un complot de saltimbanques (1975) / A Splendid Conspiracy, translation by Alyson Waters, New Directions Publishing (2010) ISBN 0-8112-1779-5
• Une ambition dans le désert (1984)
• Les couleurs de l'infamie (1999) / The Colors of Infamy, translation by Alyson Waters, New Directions Publishing (2011) ISBN 0-8112-1795-7

Films

• In 1978 Les fainéants dans la vallée fertile was made into a film by the Greek director Nikos Panagiotopoulos. (First Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Second Prize at the Chicago Film Festival). ([1])
• Beggars and Noblemen (1991) and La Violence et la dérision (2004) were made into movies by the female Egyptian film director Asmaa El-Bakry.
• He was the screenwriter for Les Guichets du Louvre.

Bibliography

• Conversation avec Albert Cossery ( Michel Mitrani ) 1995 - Joelle Losfeld
• L'Egypte d'Albert Cossery 2001 - Joelle Losfeld
• Le Magazine littéraire Novembre 2005 - Propos recueillis par Aliette Armel