Currently unavailable.
We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

Follow the author

John Updike

Follow

The Coup Paperback

by John Updike (Author)

36

See all formats and editions

John Updike is one of America's most versatile men of letters. His characterization of Rabbit Angstrom in RABBIT RUN, RABBIT REDUX and RABBIT IS RICH has made the author richer than Rabbit. But in THE COUP, Updike dissects a modern African state called Kush. Narrated tongue-in-cheek by Kush's exiled president, Colonel Felix Ellellou, Updike proves he is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to slicing up bunkum, whether black or white, first world or third.

Language

English
Publisher

Crest
ISBN-10

9992849312
ISBN-13

978-9992849316
See all details

John Updike
148
Paperback
1 offer from $12.79

Product details

Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9992849312
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9992849316

Customer Reviews:
36

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

John Updike

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. John Updike died on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5

36 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Marius Gabriel

A timeless masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

As the author of my own book on Africa, Gabon , I have to acknowledge Updike as a great master.

First published in 1978, The Coup is as fresh today as it was then, the cautionary tale of an African dictator's life and loves which moves effortlessly between exquisite poetry and high farce.

The imaginary country of Kush, a desert landscape unblessed with oil, producing only a meagre crop of peanuts, is the great prize which falls into the lap of the hero, Ellellou, at the stroke of a sword. It is a metaphor for his own life, sprawling, yet producing so little.

Drifting between his many women, Ellellou never succeeds in governing either them or his country. Instead, he meditates on his own life: his student days in America, his travels through the often mythical world of the Sahara, his own search for self-realization. The miracle of the book is that in the end he finds himself, not as a dictator or a political being, but simply as a man.

Seldom does writing give one so physical a pleasure as the lyrical passages in this book.

A magnificent achievement, perhaps Updike's greatest novel.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Daniel Myers

Diary Of A Madman?

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2008

Verified Purchase

This is a fascinating book told (switching seemingly at random between third and first person) of a character quite literally torn in two. The other reviewers here seem, almost to a one, to be transfixed by puzzling out whether Updike has caught what the "real" Africa is like, whatever that might mean. This question is by-the-bye. The pertinent question is whether Updike has accurately captured the soul of the "unhappy" Felix Ellellou (as Updike wryly dubs him). "Felix" is Latin for happy. I think the answer is, on the whole: Yes, quite well.

There are actually two coups here. The first occurs when Ellellou beheads with a scimitar the king and former father figure to him. The decapitation, described by its perpetrator, is a wonder in slow-motion, hallucinatory prose, of which the following is an example:

"I lifted the sword high, so that the reflection from its flashing blade hurtled around the square like a hawk of lethal brightness, slicing the eyes of the crowd and the hardened clay of the facades, the shuttered fearful windows, the blanched, pegged walls and squat aspiring minaret of the Mosque of the Day of Disaster." P.72

And it goes on. The second coup occurs at the end, where Ellellou himself is deposed rather than beheaded, pensioned off to France to write his memoirs, which, of course, comprise this book.

The pith of these memoirs occurs when Ellellou, with one of his wives, takes a harrowing trip to the northeast of his country. Here we learn, in flashbacks, of his upbringing: His stint in the French Army during the French-Indochina War (which, for those unaware, marked the beginning of the Vietnam War) to his study at an American college in Wisconsin where, much to his chagrin, he was Americanised more than he wants to admit to himself. What occurs during this trek is the final break-up of any sort of self-identity. He is torn between African animism and Islam (to which he was converted in America), between French military esprit de corps and individualistic Western notions, between the integrity (as he imagines it) of his native Kush and the irruption of oil-greedy Americans into it. I can't put it better than those seeking his downfall put it into the mouth of the stolen skull of the decapitated king in a rather macabre episode:

"...his political war, which causes him to burn gifts of food and assassinate those functionaries who bring these gifts, is in truth a war within himself, for which the innocent multitudes suffer." P.212

So, the prospective reader is thinking, another mad African dictator, why should I bother? For a number of reasons, I should say, but primarily because you'll come to understand what makes them mad and even sympathise with them. You will actually come to see a bit of you in them, or at least the one depicted here. As Felix poses it:

"But who, in the world, now, does not live between two worlds?"p.62

Who indeed?

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

H. W. Taeusch

A great writer should stay in his lane

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2022

Verified Purchase

Updike couldn't go wrong when writing sentences. But he really should have gone with his strengths (now showing up in Franzen's writing) even after writing all of the Rabbit novels. Updike should have posted "Plots are not U" over his writing desk and written more poetry if he didn't have another novel in him. Read Rabbit Run if you are new to Updike.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Joe

Brilliantly written satire

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

Brilliantly written satire, even poetic in places. Moderately politically incorrect mockery of a poor African country (based on Chad) and its overly idealistic leader (reminiscent of King Arthur in "The Holy Grail"), though some of his observations are to be taken seriously and the US is satirized as well. More interesting if you are familiar with or want to learn about the region.

Turn to almost any page and you will find a quotable and incisive passage. The details and the descriptions are far more interesting than the minimal plot (example: "More than once we had to detour around a giraffe skeleton strung across the piste, the creature drawn there on its last legs by the thin mane of grass that in this desolation sprang up in response to the liquid that boiling radiators spilled in passing").

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

ManFred

Great book!

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2020

Nothing to dislike.

Style over substance.

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2010

Hakim Felix Ellelou is the ex-dictator of the African country Kush (which kind of resembles Sudan). This book is his memoir, not just of his time as a national leader, but of his whole life - his education in Wisconsin, his wives, his politics, etc.

Here's what Anthony Burgess wrote about it in 99 Novels, 'There is a large lyric love of the surface of the world, in which accurate visual notation conjoins with a great verbal gift.' Very true. Updike has a lush, clever, poetic writing style. You might say it's Nabokovian. There are many impressive, well crafted images. The guys got some chops.

That said, I didn't read this book with a lot of pleasure. I didn't buy Hakim. I thought he was a caricature. The attempts at humor were forced and un-funny. Worse than all that is that Updike ignores the story. There's alot of backflashing. The scenes jump around willy nilly. Background information is skipped (too mundane for the author). There's zero dramatic tension. Towards the end I had to force myself to finish the thing. I didn't care what happened. Nothing mattered. It was tiresome.

I was surprised how little I liked this book. I remember liking Roger's Version and various short stories by Updike. He whiffed on this one though.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

The Coup Paperback

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product details

Videos

About the author

John Updike

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.