Ossama is a thief, but a tasteful, well-mannered, easy-smiling one. His eyes sparkle and his sartorial taste is impeccable. His country may be in shambles, but he’s a hedonist convinced that “nothing on this earth is tragic for an intelligent man.” By matching the style of the privelged class, he can avoid the suspicious gaze of the police, and so he lazily glides around the cafés of Cairo, seeking his prey. After taking a crocodile wallet from a fat, opulent man, he finds not just a gratifying amount of cash, but also a letter — a letter from the Ministry of Public Works, cutting off its ties to the fat man. A source of rich bribes heretofore, the fat man is now too hot to handle; he’s a fabulously wealthy real-estate developer, lately much in the news because one of his cheap buildings has just collapsed, killing fifty tenants. Ossama, “by some divine decree,” has become the repository of a scandal of epic proportions. And so he decides he must act. . . Among the books to be treasured by the utterly singular Albert Cossery, his last — The Colors of Infamy — is a particular jewel.

Summoned home to Egypt after a long European debauch (disguised as “study”), our hero Teymour – in the opening line of A Splendid Conspiracy – is feeling “as unlucky as a flea on a bald man’s head.” Poor Teymour sits forlorn in a provincial café, a far cry from his beloved Paris. Two old friends, however, rescue him. They applaud his phony diploma as perfect in “a world where everything is false” and they draw him into their hedonistic rounds as gentlemen of leisure. Life, they explain, “while essentially pointless is extremely interesting.” The small city may seem tedious, but there are women to seduce, powerful men to tease, and also strange events: rich notables are disappearing. Eyeing the machinations of our three pleasure seekers and nervous about the missing rich men, the authorities soon see–in complex schemes to bed young girls–signs of political conspiracies. The three young men, although mistaken for terrorists, enjoy freedom, wit, and romance. After all, though “not every man is capable of appreciating what is around him,” the conspirators in pleasure certainly do.