Alber Kosiry

An Egyptian writer who writes in French, nicknamed the Voltaire of the Nile Albert Kasiri was born on November 3, 1913, in the Faggala neighborhood in Cairo, to Egyptian parents whose origins were from the Levant. His family was well-to-do, as his father was a property owner. Albert Cossery was educated in Christian religious schools before moving to the French Jesuit school, where he read Balzac, Molière, Victor Hugo, Voltaire and other major French classical writers. Albert Kassiri's philosophy in his life was the philosophy of laziness. He did not work in his life and used to say that he had never seen any of his family members working. His grandfather, father, and brothers in Egypt lived on the revenues of land and property, but he lived off the proceeds of his books and writing screenplays. He worked in the Merchant Marine between 1939 and 1943, which allowed him to visit many places, including America and England. He visited France for the first time when he was seventeen years old before deciding to settle there in 1945 AD, when he was thirty-two years old at the time. Albert Kassiri began writing at the age of ten, and he described himself as “the Egyptian writer who writes in French.” His works were translated into 15 languages, including Arabic. He was not satisfied with the Arabic translation version due to the deletion that occurred by the censorship. Some of his novels were translated by Mahmoud Qassem and published in Cairo. Albert Kassiri died on June 22, 2008, at the age of 94, in his room at the La Louisien Hotel. He left a literary legacy consisting of 8 novels and a collection of short stories.