1. Albert Cossery was an Egyptian-born French writer.
10 Facts About Albert Cossery
1. 2.
Albert Cossery's writings pay tribute to the humble and to the misfits of his childhood in Cairo, as well as praise a form of laziness and simplicity very distant from our contemporary society.
3.
Albert Cossery was well known in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where he lived in the same hotel, Hotel La Louisiane, since 1945.
4.
Albert Cossery was born in Cairo to a Greek Orthodox Christian family of Syrian descent, specifically from al-Qusayr.
5.
Albert Cossery's parents were wealthy small-property owners that originally owned land in Damietta.
6.
Albert Cossery's writing mocks vanity and the narrowness of materialism and his principal characters are mainly vagrants, thieves or dandies that subvert the order of an unfair society.
7.
Albert Cossery 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.
8.
Albert Cossery's 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 or avantgarde writers.
9.
In 1990 Albert Cossery was awarded the Grand prix de la francophonie of the Academie francaise and in 2005 the Grand Prix Poncetton de la SGDL.
10.
Three more of Albert Cossery's novels have since been published in English translation: Anna Moschovakis' The Jokers and Alyson Waters' A Splendid Conspiracy and The Colors of Infamy.