Graphic Fiction by Albert Cossery and Golo

Translated from the French by Lulu Norman

Albert Cossery's 1955 masterpiece, Proud Beggars, takes place in the slums of Cairo during the last days of World War II. While some residents struggle with oppression, poverty, and corruption, others renounce the hypocrisy of society and embrace their freedom from the material world. Characters include the former university professor Gohar, who has thrown over his previous life to work as a bookkeeper at the brothel and who murders a young prostitute on a whim for drug money; his drug dealer and fellow "proud beggar," Yeghen, who knows Gohar is the murderer and schemes to save him from conviction; the melodramatic revolutionary El Kordi who struggles with his status in society; his girlfriend, the prostitute Naila, whom he plans to save; Set Amina, the madam; and Nour El Din, a corrupt policeman who in the events is made to question his beliefs about social order and responsibility. This extract from the final sections of the graphic version of the novel opens with the characters at the brothel dealing with an undercover policeman disguised as a rich merchant from out of town.

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Definitions

Master: Translation of effendi, a title used for respect or courtesy.
Auntie: A respectful term of address for an older woman.

First published in English in Words Without Borders' February 2010 issue: (Worth) Ten Thousand Words, Part IV: International Graphic Novels.

From Mendiants et Orgueilleux. Published 2009 by Futuropolis. Copyright 2009 by Futuropolis. By arrangement with the publisher. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel for the Sylvain Coissard Agency, France. Translation copyright 2010 by Lulu Norman. All rights reserved.

for Proud Beggars
https://wwb-campus.org/literature/from-proud-beggars

Albert Cossery

"The Voltaire of the Nile," Albert Cossery (1913–2008) was born in Cairo. At the age of seventeen he moved to Paris, where he would live for the rest of his life. Some of his books translated into English are Men God Forgot, The House of Certain Death, The Lazy Ones, and Proud Beggars. In 1990 Cossery was awarded the Grand Prix de La Francophonie de l’Académie Française.

Golo

Golo (pen name of Guy Nadeau) was born in 1948 in France and lives in Cairo. He began his career in 1973 as a magazine illustrator for French music and various Egyptian newspapers, and he has published numerous graphic novels, including Mes mille et une nuits au Caire.

Lulu Norman (translator)

Lulu Norman lives in London. Working from French and Spanish, she has translated Ricardo Arrieta, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Cossery, Mahmoud Darwish, and Serge Gainsbourg, and written for the Guardian, the Independent, and the London Review of Books. Her translation of Mahi Binebine's Welcome to Paradise was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004 and Horses of God has just been awarded a 2013 English PEN Award for outstanding writing in translation. 

Her most recent translations include Lebanese Cuisine by Andrée Maalouf and Karim Haïdar (Saqi Books, 2010) with Sophie Lewis, three stories in the Penguin Anthology of African Writing, Gods and Soldiers (Penguin Books 2009), Paris Noir (Serpents Tail, 2007), The Belly of the Atlantic by Fatou Diome (Serpents Tail, 2006), The Star of Algiers by Aziz Chouaki (Graywolf 2004, Serpents Tail 2006), all with Ros Schwartz, and The Demented Dance by Mounsi (Black Amber, 2003). She also works as a freelance editor and is an editorial assistant at Banipal, the journal of modern Arab literature.

Links available online only

Meet Golo and Albert Cossery

Read the page on Golo in Comiclopedia.

Then, get to know Albert Cossery, the author of the novel Proud Beggars, on which this comic is based, via an interview withBanipal or a Paris Review profile followed by a poem called "Beggars."

Next, read "Shakedown: Cossery in Egypt," from The Paris Review, to learn about Cossery's thoughts on revolution and find out why a Harlem Shake protest in Egypt was deemed a "vindication of Cosserian thought" on political action. test

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Hear the Names

Listen to pronunciations of the Egyptian Arabic terms in this story, read aloud by Noor Nagi.

(Listen on SoundCloud.)

Get the Full Story(ies)

To better understand the plot of Proud Beggars, read reviews of Cossery's novel from Full Stop and The New Inquiry. Or find out more about Golo, Cossery, and the history of Cairo in an article about the film adaptation of the novel (the title is sometimes also translated as Beggars and Noblemen.)
Look at the original French version of this graphic story, Mendiants et Orgueilleux; click on "voir les 6 images" to see some more pages. Read other works by Albert Cossery: The Jokers, A Splendid Conspiracy, Laziness in the Fertile Valley, and The Colors of Infamy.
You may be surprised to learn that, until recently, Golo's Proud Beggars wasn't available in Arabic! That recently changed: read about the new translation, and Egyptian responses to it, on madamasr.com.

Visit Cairo and Its Coffeehouses

Watch a short documentary film of life in Cairo in the 1950s.

Then, listen to a sound clip from Café Riche, a sort of symbol of Cairo coffeehouse culture.

Finally, read about the larger political and cultural impact of Cairo coffeehouses.

A man listening to a friend at the el-Fishawy Cafe in Cairo, Egypt, 2017. By Mark Fischer.

Get Background on Egypt

Learn about the history of Cairo in the 20th century.

Then, to learn more about Egypt's history, read the BBC's timeline of key events from 7000 BCE to 2018.

Or, find out about current events in the newspaper The Egypt Independent.

Links available online only

Golo, Cossery, and Artistic Influence

Golo led a series of comix workshops that many believe led to the rise of the form in Egypt. One comix artist inspired by Golo's 2002 workshop was Magdy El Shafee---read his comic pamphlet "Two Million People in the Square."
Browse through other graphic literature on Comiclopedia. Look at the works of artists Tardi and Hergé, who are said to be influences on Golo.
Albery Cossery has been referred to as the "Voltaire of the Nile." Read an intellectual biography of Voltaire, a French author, activist, and philosopher, and browse through his complete works.

A Picture-Tour Through Modern Egypt

"Egyptians will never give up the struggle for freedom and democracy." Mural tribute by graphic artist Ganzeer and a team of volunteers to eighteen-year-old Islam Rafat Zinhoum, killed by security forces during the uprising of 2011. Photograph by Alisdare Hickson. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Look through photos from Egypt between 1800 to 2013. Then, look at some images from modern Cairo in a photo essay on a neighborhood dubbed "one of Egypt's most desperate slums," in Cairo Dar al-Salam.

More Music

Learn about Umm Kulthum, a famous Egyptian musician whose music could have been played in a café in the 1940s. Watch a video of her performing "Al Atlal" with English subtitles.

(Watch the video on Youtube.)

Then read about 20th-century Arab urban music on the page of the group Zikrayat.

More Cairo Comix

For other graphic literature about Cairo, read “The Apartment in Bab el-Louk,” also published on WWB Campus, and an excerpt from Metro.

Related Reading

The Apartment in Bab el-Louk - Graphic Fiction

The Last of the Bunch - Graphic Fiction