Cossery, whose eight books were translated into 15-odd languages, passed away in the modest streetcorner hotel that was his home for more than 60 years on the Left Bank, the literary heart of the French capital.

“A few days before he died, this magnificent man was still making his usual rounds to the Cafe de Flore and the Deux Magots,” a manager at the Louisiana hotel said.

His books — which blended humor, sarcasm and Oriental wisdom — included “Proud Beggars,” “A Room In Cairo,” “Men God Forgot,” and his last novel, “The Colors of Infamy,” published in French in 1999 and made into a comic book.

Fans nicknamed him “the Voltaire of the Nile” and his stories were peopled with humble folk and misfits — streetsweepers, thieves, prostitutes — who mocked authority.

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