Before the Cock Crow

The First-Born of Egypt #3

by Simon Raven

Spine creased, cover creased and worn, page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Genres: Fiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel". E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_R...

Reviews

[Doug]

3rd in Raven's 'The First-Born of Egypt' series, continuing on with the same characters and with a more unified plot than in his original 'Alms for Oblivion' sequence. This introduces a new character, Raisley Conyngham, teacher at Marius Stern's new school, a shady and sinister provocateur who sets a bizarre test for Marius, with which most of the book is concerned. However, the ongoing saga of the 'real' heir of the Cantaloup Marquessate, begun back in The Survivors, also finally comes to a satisfying conclusion.

[Johan]

Although occasionally you may feel that this book is morally not good for you, you have to go on reading. Being so far in the series now, I'm very glad I never went to an English public school. Strange though, how these outlandish characters somehow get under your skin.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey]

Like gulping a bumper of False Bay Pinotage ...