Albert Cossery

Born

1913-11-03

Died

2008-06-22

Birthplace

Cairo, Egypt

Biography

Albert Cossery (Arabic: البرت قصيري) (3 November 1913 – 22 June 2008) was an Egyptian-born French writer.[1] Although Cossery lived most of his life in Paris and only wrote in the French language, all of his novels were either set in his country of birth, Egypt, or in an imaginary Middle Eastern country. He was nicknamed "The Voltaire of the Nile". His 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. Albert Cossery was well known in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he lived in the same hotel, Hotel La Louisiane, since 1945.