Albert Cossery: A 'Voltaire of the Nile' and master of irony whose novels drew on the Egypt of his youth in the 1930s

Until a few days before his death at the age of 94, the very thin, very upright, immaculately dressed figure of Albert Cossery could often be seen emerging in the late afternoon from the Hotel La Louisiane, rue de Seine (where he'd occupied a small room for over 60 years), sitting alone in the Luxembourg gardens or walking along the Boulevard St Germain, to the terrace of the Café Flore, where, as he said, "they have to be nice to me – I'm the only one left".

The stations of this daily itinerary scarcely varied: Cossery needed a particular universe in order to write, and to give us the very particular universe of his novels, which couldn't be farther from St Germain-des-Près. They draw mainly on the Cairo of his youth in the 1930s and 1940s and form a kind of beggars' opera of idlers, prostitutes and pickpockets, ranged against their antagonists: policemen, government ministers or corrupt businessmen. Though he left Egypt for Paris after the Second World War, it never left him.

In his eight novels, this "Voltaire of the Nile" satirised the false, hypocritical reality imposed on society over the centuries by the rich and powerful, which his heroes throw off by making their own revolution. They do this by detaching themselves from the prevalent values and dogma, from possessions and ambition, cultivating a freedom and indolence that enables them to give full rein to their enjoyment of life and their sensuality, as well as giving them precious time to think. The result constitutes a kind of antidote to Western life and society.

Cossery could not be accused of being prolific; he wrote a book every 10 or so years and claimed to write a sentence per week (which he then would rewrite again and again) and often nothing for months or years, but, as he saw it, "doing nothing is inner work". Like his characters, he had few needs or possessions and his only ambition was that his books remain available, his only responsibility to observe and make fun.

Born in Cairo in 1913, Albert Cossery was sent to French schools from the age of five. His father owned land and had no need to work; if the family ran into difficulty his mother would sell a piece of jewellery. From the age of 10 Cossery knew he'd become a writer and began writing stories about the films he saw with his mother. Although she was illiterate and his father had never read a book, his brothers were intellectuals and had all the classic French texts, which Cossery devoured as soon as he could read.

He visited Paris at the age of 17 to continue his studies (but never did) and then, employed as chief steward on a liner from Port Said to New York, saw the world and the Second World War up close, transporting freight and then passengers (mostly Jews fleeing countries invaded by Hitler) across the Atlantic.

When he was 27, his first book, Les Hommes oubliés de Dieu (Men God Forgot, 1941), a collection of short stories, was published in Cairo and in the United States, with the help of Henry Miller, who wrote: "No living writer I know of describes more poignantly the lives of the vast submerged multitude of mankind. He touches depths of despair, degradation and resignation which neither Gorky nor Dostoevsky has registered. He is dealing of course with his own people, whose misery began before Western civilization was dreamed of." This was followed in 1944 by La Maison de la Mort Certaine (The House of Certain Death).

At the end of the war, Cossery returned to Paris, attracted by the promise of its intellectual life (he particularly admired Stendhal, Céline, and Julien Gracq) and a contract with the French publisher Charlot.

He had arrived in the city in time to witness Montparnasse before the war and St Germain after it – the two best times for Paris, in his view – and became particularly close to Albert Camus (his copain de drague), Lawrence Durrell, Tristan Tzara and Alberto Giacometti, as well as Jean Genet and Raymond Queneau. He also met and married the actress Monique Chaumette, although this relationship was not to last (he later put this down to his need to be alone).

His next book was Les Fainéants dans la Vallée Fertile (published in English as The Lazy Ones and later made into a play and a film). Then came his most famous, Mendiants et Orgueilleux (1955, translated as Proud Beggars, 1981). What little of his work there was in English is out of print now; the writer John Murray offers a possible reason for Cossery's neglect here: "His use of irony is one of the most powerful and pity-inducing to be found in any literature East or West, old or new. It is an irony so fierce, an anger so sharply muted by inversion of sarcasm and disgust that it makes the reader's hair stand on end with guilty compassion."

In his 1964 novel La Violence et la Dérision ("Violence and Derision"), Cossery argues the futility of locking horns with your oppressor; when all around is misery and corruption, he suggests, there is no point in violent confrontation, because this takes authority seriously – exactly what it needs in order to survive. Far more effective – and far more natural – to undermine it by mockery and ridicule, as happens in this book to hilarious effect.

After Un Complot de Saltimbanques ("A Conspiracy of Acrobats", 1975) came Une Ambition dans le Désert ("Ambition in the Desert", 1984) which in many ways anticipated the first Gulf War and the war in Iraq.

In this book the action moves to present-day Dofa, a wretchedly poor, fictional Gulf state which has so far escaped the attention of the great imperialist superpower and the multinational corporations: "They had invaded the neighbouring emirates which, to their misfortune, found themselves in possession of immense, undeniable oil resources. Devoid of any scruples and guided by their squalid interests, they had demeaned a race of kings, transforming them into miserable, filth-covered workers, in the image of their own working classes groaning in dark industrial cities. For a despicable salary, the last of these nomads had lost their nobility and their liberty. . . They who had known the eternity of horizons, the limpid sky over green oases and waking refreshed under canvas, had become exiles in their own kingdom."

It transpires that the prime minister himself, desperate to play a part on the international scene, has organised a series of inept terrorist attacks in his own land in a vain bid for attention.

After a 15-year silence Cossery brought out his last book, Les Couleurs de l'Infamie ("The Colours of Infamy", 1999), set in present-day Cairo, in which a pickpocket steals a wallet from a property developer (who is also the brother of a government minister) and in it finds a letter that reveals their complicity in the collapse of a building which caused the deaths of 50 people ("We're not living in the era of the Pharaohs; we have to build for a limited time period").

In 1990, Cossery was awarded the Grand Prix de la Francophonie de l'Académie Française; this was followed by the Grand prix littéraire de la ville d'Antibes in 1995 and the Prix Poncetton de la Société des gens des lettres in 2005.

In his later years Cossery underwent two throat operations for cancer, which left him first hoarse and then unable to speak –though he may have secretly rejoiced at not having to answer the endless questions put to him by the journalists and admirers who flocked to see him (in fact, during a hospital stay he wrote many of his answers on cards in advance for just such irritating occasions).

Living a long life meant he had also to suffer the loss of all his family and many friends, most recently Marcello Mastroianni, Marco Ferreri and Michel Mitrani, with whom he collaborated on Conversation avec Albert Cossery (1995), which leaves the reader with this last thought: "A great book gives you extraordinary power. You may be poor, miserable, ill, desperate; reading a great masterpiece makes you forget all that."

Lulu Norman

Albert Cossery, writer: born Cairo 3 November 1913; married Monique Chaumette (marriage dissolved); died Paris 22 June 2008.