Albert Cossery (1913–2008) was a Cairo-born French writer of
Lebanese and Greek Orthodox Syrian descent who settled in Paris at
the end of the Second World War and lived there for the rest of his
life. The son of an illiterate mother and a newspaper-reading
father with a private income from inherited property, Cossery was
educated from a young age in French schools, where he received his
baccalauréat and developed a love of classical literature. At age
seventeen he made a trip to the French capital with the intention
of continuing his studies
there. Instead he joined the Egyptian merchant marine, eventually
serving as chief steward on the Port Said–New York line. When he
was twenty-seven his first book, Men God Forgot, was published in
Cairo and, with the help of Henry Miller, in the United States. In
1945 he returned to Paris to write and live alongside some of the
most influential writers and artists of the last century, including
Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tristan Tzara, Alberto Giacometti,
Lawrence Durrell, and Jean Genet. He was also, briefly, married to
the actress Monique Chaumette. In 1990 Cossery was awarded the
Grand Prix de la francophonie de l’Académie française and in 2005
the Grand Prix Poncetton de la Société des gens de lettres. In
recent years several of his books have been newly translated into
English, including A Splendid Conspiracy, The Colors of Infamy, and
The Jokers (which is available as an NYRB Classic).
Alyson Waters has translated several works from the French,
including two by Albert Cossery. She has received a National
Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a PEN Translation
Fund grant, and residency grants from the Centre national du livre,
the Villa Gillet in Lyon, France, and the Banff International
Literary Translation Centre. She teaches literary translation in
the French Departments of Yale University and NYU, is the managing
editor of Yale French Studies, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
“The book that perhaps best expresses Cossery’s characteristic
outlook on life and is still his best-known work. Marked by
Cossery’s trademark elegance, the novel is humorous and reflective
by turns. This is a world of simple pleasures, charming humour and
the mockery of anything that might smack of authority.”
—David Tresilian, Al Ahram Weekly
“Albert Cossery...ought to be a household name. he’s that good: an
elegant stylist, an unrelenting ironist, his great subject the
futility of ambition ‘in a world where everything is false.’”
—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
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