The Lazy Ones

byAlbert Cossery, William Goyen (Translator)

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Three brothers live with their father, uncle and maid in a dilapidated Cairo suburb, spending as much time as they possibly can doing nothing whatsoever. But Serag, the youngest of the three, has started having crazy ideas that threaten to shatter the household’s torpid equilibrium. He wants to find a job. If only he wasn’t so sleepy.

Written in 1953, in the louche Parisian hotel room Albert Cossery called home for fifty-seven years, The Lazy Ones is a playful celebration of Cossery’s belief in the ultimate dignity of indolence in an alienated society. As he remarked, ‘the more you are idle, the more you have time to reflect. Laziness is a critical position by which to judge the world.’
Above all Cossery, one of the last and quirkiest links to the postwar glory days of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, elevated idleness to an art form. He lived on his royalties and the generosity of his friends, and he liked to show his hands and say: "They have not worked for 2,000 years."
The Times

About Albert Cossery

Albert Cossery was born in Cairo in 1913. He settled in Paris in 1945 in order to devote himself to writing, flirting and friendship with 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. He wrote eight novels and was awarded the Grand Prix de La Francophonie de l’Académie française and the Grand Prix Poncetton de la SGDL. He died in 2008.
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