The Lazy Ones

‘Serag had heard that men worked, but these were only stories that one told. He never believed them completely.’

Three brothers live with their father, uncle and maid in a dilapidated Cairo suburb, spending as much time as they possibly can doing nothing whatsoever. Galal has been asleep for seven years, occasionally waking to eat; Rafik moves between his bed and attempts to sabotage his father’s planned remarriage. But Serag, the youngest of the three, has started having crazy ideas that threaten to shatter the household’s torpid equilibrium. He wants to find a job. If only he wasn’t so sleepy.

Written in 1953, in the louche Parisian hotel room Albert Cossery lived in for sixty-three years, The Lazy Ones is a playful celebration of Cossery’s belief in the ultimate dignity of indolence in an alienated, materialistic society. As he remarked, ‘the more you are idle, the more you have time to reflect. Laziness is a critical position by which to judge the world.’