The Coup

By John Updike

Book Overview

A novel that charts the violent events in an imaginary African nation, as told by the colonel and leader of the country--from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039450268X
• ISBN13: 9780394502687
• Release Date: November 1978
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.7" x 1.3" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

An excellent example of an Updike tragicomedy

I read this book years ago when it was new, but it jumped back into my head the other day and I decided to write my thoughts on it. I think this novel stands among Updike's better works and I wonder if it might resonate again in today's world. This novel was written after a decade of unrest in Africa when the dictators and coups were a semiannual occurence. Well, unfortuately, the world is starting to look like those days again. Updike's genius in this novel was that he distilled the characters down to the essential elements necessary for the plot. That is would makes this novel comic at the same time it is about violence, corruption and oppression. Many people will find the character treatment to be thin. I believe the characters read like people in a news artcile on purpose. To keep the reader from identifying too closely. I have always really liked John Updike and I think this is an excellent, and different, example of his work. I highly recommend it.

Sad or Funny?

Before picking this book up, I had no preconceived notions. I have never read Updike, and I have never heard of the book. After the first chapter, I was ready for a serious look at innocent African poverty and the evil Western world. But I soon found out that this book was more of a comedy than anything else. About a fictitious nation (which I believe represents Ethiopia), this book is told from the point of view of this nation's president. The book was written in 1978 and mocks both Islam and Marxism. I don't believe a book like this would survive today's form of censorship called political correctness, but I found it refreshingly funny. Literature and art of today is fond of mocking Christianity and Democracy (which is fine, it is their right) but rarely can anything outside of those two things be poked fun at, this book helped point that fact out. John Updike is obviously a great writer. It took me several dozen pages to get used to his writing style (heavy on satire and very witty), but I learned to really enjoy it. As an American living in a third world country- I could relate to several of the scenarios in the book. But instead of driving home any kind of moral lessons or preaching political preferences, Updike just makes a funny story out of these situations. Too often fiction has underlying agendas which overwhelm and overshadow the story. At times this is good, but usually it is annoying. Updike does nothing of the sort in this book, there is just good fiction and good laughs. I look forward to reading some of Updike's other stuff, as he is a very talented and enjoyable writer.

All Animals Are Equal...

Updike has created a strangely loveable tyrant in Ellelou. An impotent, Islamic fundamentalist zealot, Ellelou is the president of a mythical African socialist republic, Kush, and he narrates this great bad dream of a book. His voice is expertly used to comically tease out and eventually lay bare the self serving hypocrisy at the heart of Soviet and US power politics as the cold war nears its end in the late 60s/early 70s. A supporting cast is wonderfully sketched. The bureaucratic toad with the silk Parisian shirts and penchant for all things western, Ezana, is very funny. The delightfully spirited yet doomed liberal Amercan wife of Ellelou, Candy, (whom he seduced and transplanted to Kush having met at university in America) recalls the noble yet faintly ridiculous "human shield" volunteers who set off to deflect the American bombs in the recent Iraq war only to fall out along the way in a cloud of petty squabbles. Ellelou's many other wives are a joy to behold and often quite saucy. The American diplomat Klipspringer is wonderfully vacant, simple of mind and outlook, eternally buoyant and optimistic, no doubt he went on to great things under Reagan!This is all great fun and no one escapes the author?s scalpel that dissects, via jibes and faux-dogmatism, the vacancy at the heart of everything. All are treated equally here: middle class America, drunken (stereotypical unfortunately) Russian missile crews, the USA's private racial embarrassment, the world?s great religions, clownish black Muslim students, superpower policy in the poorest countries, arrogant white liberal professors (who understand Africa better than Africans...!), naive peace workers, the paper-thin nature of African government, jet-setting diplomats, all are given equal rights to make themselves look foolish - which is a lot of fun but not very optimistic. Updike's future is always bleak. I think he sees the future of human history as a facsimile of its past, only bigger and worse: more war, more violence, more division, more exploitation, more dogma, more illness, more pollution, more greed, more stupidity - and ultimately, no doubt, a perfect peace. But there'll be no one left to enjoy it. I think he's probably right, humans can?t help themselves and we?re all fiddling while Rome burns. Updike?s unique strength (his obvious talent aside) is that he?s one of the few writers who sees this and points it out, without offering any sort of optimism, solution or last chance. Certainly, he?s the most eloquent of these visionaries. His gift is to get to the heart of matters and show us that there's little of merit there.The novel loses a little focus from the point where the former King of Kush?s head (a Soviet funded re-animated robot version of the one decapitated publicly by Ellelou) speaks to visiting tourist parties. This leads to an odd and dreamlike penultimate segment in a sleek mirrored glass city, a capitalist Eden that has sprung up in the Sahara thanks to th

One of His Best

It took me 15 years but I finally did it. I finished reading "The Coup" this week and that means I have read all of Updike's published novels and short story collections. I'm no expert but this one has got to be one of his best. All the usual Updike elements are there: flawless prose, "tragicomic" situations (emphasis on "comic" in this book), character development, and the pace is just right. The scene where the protaganist meets the parents of his American girl friend is simply hilarious. If you're a fan and haven't read "The Coup" you're definitely missing out. I highly recommend it.

An astute and humorous look at Cold War politics in Africa

If you have ever lived or worked in Sahelian Africa (or in the developing world in general) read this book! At first I had my doubts that a man who is best known for portraying suburban America could write about Africa. But the same keen eye for social nuance, and biting humor come to bear on a fictional Sahelian country and its leader who is playing the Cold War superpowers against one another for fun and profit. I think what impressed me the most, was Updike's ability to get inside the head of an African leader who has one foot in Western academia and the other in his pre-Saharan village. And, of course, Updike writes beautifully on just about any topic. I have read a lot of books about Africa, from the literary to mundane travelogues, but this book ranks among my favorites both for its humour and the underlying insight to what's gone wrong in Western relations with Africa.