The Troubadour

The First-Born of Egypt #7

by Simon Raven

‘Where the twins had been a body lay in long, soft robes, and by its head a discarded lute. The head was uncovered and split into halves from the apex of the skull to the bridge of the nose'. The question is whether this macabre scene is only theatre or whether it is it a sign of ill omen. In this, the concluding book in Simon Raven's First Born of Egypt saga, the fate of Raisley Conyngham, Marius Stern and other characters is decided.

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so, after 32 days, 17 books and 3,817 pages, I come to the conclusion of Raven's two series satirizing the English upper crust, from the end of WW2 to the early 1980's. It's been a fun and entertaining ride, and one has to be amazed at how Raven could keep literally about 200 characters in perpetual action and the intricacies of many intersecting storylines straight - and yet come to a satisfying conclusion that ties everything up in his typically bizarre fashion.

There are still about a dozen more Raven stand-alone novels for me to dive into - the two which he wrote in the years between the two series - The Roses Of Picardie and September Castle - actually focusing on several tangential characters from the series also.

[Alan Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Raven's related series, the "Alms for Oblivion" saga, and the sequel series "The First Born of Egypt" kept me spellbound for many years. Beginning with a sordid tale of betrayal between homosexual schoolboys (in "Fielding Gray"), Raven started as he meant to go on, and from that moment his characters loved, hated, intrigued, tricked, cried, betrayed, lived and died in twenty or so of the darkest, funniest, most emotionally captivating books ever written.

This volume, which I think may be the last Raven ever wrote, brings the whole monumental achievement to its close. The dastardly scion of the devil (and this is probably not just rhetoric) Raisley Coynigham, finally gets his just (violent) desserts, the selfish and crafty, yet somehow likeable Lord Cantaloupe dies and gets a spiritual escort to whatever afterlife is prepared for him, and everyone conspires to keep the police out of the events that led up to it - and then two of the main characters go off to play Royal Tennis, which is the sort of reaction you really can't get anywhere outside of Raven! Lovely stuff. So sad this series had to end... and so envious of you, if you're only just discovering the joy to be had from these wonderful stories!

[Johan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed with the final tome in The Prince of Egypt series. That Conyngham would get his come uppance, was a given - but everything coming together at Canteloupe's funeral was just to pat a finish.So 15 novels later, I know I'll want to reread the series as there's still a lot to be discovered and re-discovered in there!

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I shall miss the company of this elegant rotten gang - like Fielding Gray, I'll place my silk hat upon my chest where I think my heart should be