The Coup
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Good. Markings: No markings. Binding condition: Good.
In the sun-scorched, famine-stricken nation of Kush — a landlocked African republic teetering on the edge of collapse — Colonel Hakim Félix Ellelloû rules with an iron ideology, a poet's tongue, and a tyrant's paranoia. The Coup chronicles his fevered memoir, a labyrinthine account of political betrayal, revolutionary fervour, and the grotesque absurdity of power, set against a landscape of crushing poverty and Cold War interference. Updike constructs a narrative that is simultaneously a savage political satire and a deeply personal confession, as Ellelloû navigates his four wives, his American education, and his visceral hatred of the very culture he cannot escape. Written at the height of Updike's powers, The Coup stands as one of American literature's most audacious acts of ventriloquism — a white, suburban novelist inhabiting the consciousness of an African dictator with startling conviction and lyrical authority. Updike's prose is rich, baroque, and relentlessly intelligent, arguing that the post-colonial world is not merely a political condition but a psychological one, a hall of mirrors in which identity, faith, and nationhood are endlessly refracted. For readers willing to surrender to its demanding brilliance, this novel poses a question that lingers long after the final page: who, in the end, is the author of a revolution?
Author: John Updike
Format: Hardback
Published: 1979, University of Queensland Press,
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Good. Markings: No markings. Binding condition: Good.
In the sun-scorched, famine-stricken nation of Kush — a landlocked African republic teetering on the edge of collapse — Colonel Hakim Félix Ellelloû rules with an iron ideology, a poet's tongue, and a tyrant's paranoia. The Coup chronicles his fevered memoir, a labyrinthine account of political betrayal, revolutionary fervour, and the grotesque absurdity of power, set against a landscape of crushing poverty and Cold War interference. Updike constructs a narrative that is simultaneously a savage political satire and a deeply personal confession, as Ellelloû navigates his four wives, his American education, and his visceral hatred of the very culture he cannot escape. Written at the height of Updike's powers, The Coup stands as one of American literature's most audacious acts of ventriloquism — a white, suburban novelist inhabiting the consciousness of an African dictator with startling conviction and lyrical authority. Updike's prose is rich, baroque, and relentlessly intelligent, arguing that the post-colonial world is not merely a political condition but a psychological one, a hall of mirrors in which identity, faith, and nationhood are endlessly refracted. For readers willing to surrender to its demanding brilliance, this novel poses a question that lingers long after the final page: who, in the end, is the author of a revolution?