Albert Cossery was an Egyptian-born French writer. 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.