Laziness in the Fertile Valley

Albert Cossery

Cossery’s heroes are the descendants of Baudelaire’s flâneur, of the Surrealists with their rejection of the sacrosanct work ethic, not to mention the peripatetic Beats or the countercultural ‘dropouts’ of the 1960s.

The Nation

A family of proud layabouts star in this comic novel by the Egyptian writer known as “the Voltaire of the Nile”

Laziness in the Fertile Valley

by Albert Cossery

Translated from French by William Goyen

With a contribution by Henry Miller and Anna Della Subin

Laziness in the Fertile Valley is Albert Cossery’s biting social satire about a father, his three sons, and their uncle — slackers one and all. One brother has been sleeping for almost seven years, waking only to use the bathroom and eat a meal. Another savagely defends the household from women. Serag, the youngest, is the only member of the family interested in getting a job. But even he — try as he might — has a hard time resisting the call of laziness.

Read a section of the afterword by Anna Della Subin at Bookforum.

Buy Laziness in the Fertile Valley

Paperback(published Nov, 19 2013)

ISBN
9780811218740
Price US
13.95
Price CN
15
Page Count
192

Ebook(published Nov, 19 2013)

ISBN
9780811219938
Price US
13.95
Portrait of Albert Cossery

Albert Cossery

20th century Egyptian writer

Cossery’s heroes are the descendants of Baudelaire’s flâneur, of the Surrealists with their rejection of the sacrosanct work ethic, not to mention the peripatetic Beats or the countercultural ‘dropouts’ of the 1960s.

The Nation

Albert Cossery was the bard of absolute indolence, and as you nod off with a smile over Laziness in the Fertile Valley, you may wonder if there’s any point to waking up – except, of course, to read a few more pages.

Eliot Weinberger

Despite the seemingly unrelieved gloom and futility in which his figures move, Cossery nevertheless expresses in every work the indomitable faith in the power of people to throw off the yoke.

Henry Miller