The Jokers - Albert Cossery [68]
The picture on the front page showed the governor’s car ripped apart by the explosion; there was also a photo of Taher, his face swollen and bloody, his handcuffed fists held out in front of him in a gesture of supreme dignity. The details of the attack filled several pages, but Heykal read no farther. He crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. He was appalled by the gratuitous violence. The governor had all but disappeared from the scene, and Taher had gone and made him a martyr. He had turned an executioner into a victim, a glorious example of civic virtue and self-sacrifice for generations to come, thus perpetuating the eternal fraud.
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Published by The New York Review of Books
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Copyright © 2003 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris
Translation copyright © 2010 by Anna Moschovokis
Introduction copyright © 2010 by James Buchan
All rights reserved.
First published in France by Joëlle Losfeld, 1993
Cet ouvrage publié dans le cadre du programme d’aide à la publication bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France représenté aux Etats-Unis
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cossery, Albert, 1913–2008.
[Violence et la dérision. English]
The jokers / by Albert Cossery ; translated [from the French] by Anna Moschovakis ; introduction by James Buchan.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 978-1-59017-325-1 (alk. paper)
1. Government, Resistance to—Middle East—Fiction. 2. Satire. 3. Humorous fiction. I. Moschovakis, Anna. II. Title.
PQ2605.O725V513 2010
843'.912—dc22
2010013738
eISBN 978-1-59017-401-2
v1.0
Cover photograph: Abbas, presidential campaign poster, Damascus, Syria, 1991; © Abbas/Magnum Photos
Cover design: Katy Homans
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series visit www.nyrb.com or write to:
Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Table of Contents
Cover
Biographical Note
Title Page
Contents
Introduction
The Jokers
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
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