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The jokers - Albert Cossery

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Title
The jokers

Author
Albert Cossery

format
Paperback / softback

Publisher
New York Review Books

Language
English

UK Publication Date
20100713

Description

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.

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 baccalaurat 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'Acadmie franaise and in 2005 the Grand Prix Poncetton de la Socit des gens de lettres. His books, which have been translated into more than fifteen languages, include The House of Certain Death, The Lazy Ones, and Proud Beggars.

Anna Moschovakis has translated The Engagement by Georges Simenon and The Possession by Annie Ernaux.

James Buchan's latest novel is The Gate of Air.

Type
BOOK

Keyword Index
Government, Resistance to - Middle East - Fiction.|Satire.|Humorous fiction.

Country of Publication
New York (State)

Number of Pages
145

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The jokers - Albert Cossery

Description

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