The Coup

The Coup by John Updike The Coup describes violent events
in the imaginary African nation of Kush a large landlocked
drought-ridden sub-Saharan country led by Colonel Hakim
F?lix Ellello?. (“A leader” writes Colonel Ellello? “is
one who out of madness or goodness takes upon himself the
woe of a people. There are few men so foolish.”) Colonel
Ellello? 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 Ellello? tells his own story—always
elegantly and often in the third person—from an
undisclosed location in the South of France.