The House Of Certain Death

Albert Cossery

The House of Certain Death enters his derelict property and “the silence enfolds him like an octopus.” It is a style that draws attention to itself rather than its more or less miserable subjects, and sets up an ironic distance between their material poverty and its own lexical abundance.

Robyn Creswell, Harper's

The House Of Certain Death

by Albert Cossery

The House of Certain Death is set in a crumbling mansion in Cairo’s old city, where an ensemble cast of melon sellers, stove repairmen, street cleaners, monkey trainers, and their wives all bicker and philosophize while waiting for the roof to fall on their heads; and there is indeed a suggestion of class conflict between the tenants and their landlord—a recurring villain in Cossery’s fiction—whose downfall seems to be promised at the novel’s apocalyptic close.

Paperback(published Jan, 01 1949)

ISBN
9780811218733
Portrait of Albert Cossery

Albert Cossery

20th century Egyptian writer

The House of Certain Death enters his derelict property and “the silence enfolds him like an octopus.” It is a style that draws attention to itself rather than its more or less miserable subjects, and sets up an ironic distance between their material poverty and its own lexical abundance.

Robyn Creswell, Harper's