Laziness in the Fertile Valley
Laziness in the Fertile Valley

Author: Albert Cossery

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0811218740

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A portrait of a family of proud layabouts who avoid work and sleep all day by the Egyptian writer often referred to as "the Voltaire of the Nile" 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.

Laziness in the Fertile Valley
Laziness in the Fertile Valley

Author: Albert Cossery

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0811219933

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A portrait of a family of proud layabouts who avoid work and sleep all day by the Egyptian writer often referred to as "the Voltaire of the Nile" 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.

A Splendid Conspiracy
A Splendid Conspiracy

Author: Albert Cossery

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2010-05-25

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0811221261

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Three friends in a small Egyptian city celebrate idleness, elegance, and joie de vivre. 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.

The Colossus of Maroussi
The Colossus of Maroussi

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2010-05-18

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0811218570

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Henry Miller’s landmark travel book, now reissued in a new edition, is ready to be stuffed into any vagabond’s backpack. Like the ancient colossus that stood over the harbor of Rhodes, Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi stands as a seminal classic in travel literature. It has preceded the footsteps of prominent travel writers such as Pico Iyer and Rolf Potts. The book Miller would later cite as his favorite began with a young woman’s seductive description of Greece. Miller headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside: a flock of sheep nearly tramples the two as they lie naked on a beach; the Greek poet Katsmbalis, the “colossus” of Miller’s book, stirs every rooster within earshot of the Acropolis with his own loud crowing; cold hard-boiled eggs are warmed in a village’s single stove, and they stay in hotels that “have seen better days, but which have an aroma of the past.”

The Colors of Infamy
The Colors of Infamy

Author: Albert Cossery

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2011-11-23

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 0811217957

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A gentleman pickpocket, elegant to the bone, plies the best cafes of Cairo. Ossama is a thief: "not a minister, banker or real estate developer - a modest thief". His country may be a disaster but he is a hedonist, convinced that "nothing on this Earth is tragic for an intelligent man". In one fat victims wallet, he discovers a highly compromising letter, revealing bribery, corrupt ministers, and lethally shoddy building practices. He decides he must act...

The Henry Miller Reader
The Henry Miller Reader

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9780811201117

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A collection of works spanning the entire career of great 20th-century American writer Henry Miller, edited and introduced by Lawrence Durrell.

Aller Retour New York
Aller Retour New York

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9780811212267

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Aller Retour New York is truly vintage Henry Miller, written during his most creative period, between Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). Miller always said that his best writing was in his letters, and this unbuttoned missive to his friend Alfred Perlès is not only his longest (nearly 80 pages!) but his best--an exuberant, rambling, episodic, humorous account of his visit to New York in 1935 and return to Europe aboard a Dutch ship. Despite its high repute among Miller devotees, Aller Retour New York has never been easy to find. It was first brought out in Paris in 1935 in a limited edition, and a second edition, "Printed for Private Circulation Only," was issued in the United States ten years later. It is now available in paperback as a Revived Modern Classic, with an introduction by George Wickes that illuminates the people and personal circumstances which inform Aller Retour New York.

The Air-conditioned Nightmare
The Air-conditioned Nightmare

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780811201063

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His stories and essays celebrate those rare individuals (famous and obscure) whose creative resilience and mere existence oppose the mechanization of minds and souls.

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1957-01-17

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0811219704

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In his great triptych "The Millennium," Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. In his great triptych “The Millennium,” Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. Whence Henry Miller’s title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller’s life on the Big Sur, a section of the California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the United States—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (and writers who did not write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (and the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children and adult innocents; geniuses, cranks and the unclassifiable, like Conrad Moricand, the “Devil in Paradise” who is one of Miller’s greatest character studies. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy and brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book—the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints and clichés of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.

Henry Miller on Writing
Henry Miller on Writing

Author: Henry Miller

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1964

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780811201124

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Some of the most rewarding pages in Henry Miller's books concern his self-education as a writer. He tells, as few great writers ever have, how he set his goals, how he discovered the excitement of using words, how the books he read influenced him, and how he learned to draw on his own experience.