A postcolonial novel par excellence. ( )

Darkly humorous look at the turmoil of Cold-War Africa. Muslim Marxists in silver Mercedes, Americana, need I go on? ( )

Het 1 boek van Updike dat ik niet uitlezen kon...misschien was ik niet in stemming...misschien is dit eerder zwak of matig ( )

In honor of John Updike’s passing, I decided to have a go at the one big-name book from his writing prime that I’d never read: The Coup. And I’m certainly glad I did.

Writing in the mid-1970s, Updike breaks away from his typical fascination with skanky suburban housewives, and takes his readers along on a sometimes-bizarre but always lyrical journey to an imaginary African country, seen through the eyes of its erstwhile Islamic Marxist dictator.

Colonel Ellellou, said potentate, is a marvelous satiric creation. Educated in part in Wisconsin, of all places, Ellellou spends much of the novel visiting his four wives and one mistress. One of these wives is a nice white middle-class Midwestern girl who’s swept away by the romance and ideological impact of marrying an exotic African student who’s well-connected back in his homeland. Updike's insights into this relationship are particularly tragicomic and poignant.

The best part of the novel follows Ellellou as he goes on a kind of camel-intensive road trip to his country’s deepest and most isolated badlands, where revelation awaits him.

As the story progresses, Updike builds a quite pointed critique of ‘big man’ African dictatorships in the post-colonial era, and of the twin follies of western and Soviet ‘aid’ efforts in Africa.

It's likely that Updike could not even have published this book today. The parts of the book that satirize Islam would likely have left it languishing in a publisher’s limbo. ( )

Words, words words. It has technique, but lacks what Bruce Lee, in that first scene of "Enter the Dragon," describes as 'emotional content.' I stopped after the first 50 pages. Maybe I'll come back to it, but I doubt it.

12.29.07