John Updike | "The Coup"
- Penguin Books © 1956, 1959, 1966, 1968, 1974 by N. J. Dawood
The Coup describes violent events in the imaginary African nation of Kush, a large, landlocked, drought-ridden, sub-Saharan country led by Colonel Hakim Félix Ellelloû. Colonel Ellelloû has four wives, a silver Mercedes, and a fanatic aversion - cultural, ideological, and personal - to the United States. But the U.S. keeps creeping into Kush, and the repercussions of this incursion constitute the events of the novel. Colonel Ellelloû tells his own story - always elegantly, and often in the third person - from an undisclosed location in the South of France.
"Ellelloû is an extraordinary tour-de-force of a character... What a rich, surprising, and often funny novel The Coup is." - The New York Times Book Review
"A very funny book as well as a serious one. It’s the work of an intelligent and funny and passionate man - and it’s good." - The Washington Post Book World- Language: English
- Dimensions: 11 х 18 cm
- Pages: 249
- Cover: softcover
- First published: 1978
- This edition published: 1980