The Coup (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141188952 ISBN 13: 9780141188959

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2006

Synopsis

Nothing in his previous life could have prepared Colonel Hakim Felix Ellellou for his new role as the President of Kush. Neither the French army nor his American university provided a grounding in the subtle skills of revolutionary dictatorship. Still less did they expect him to acquire four wives!

About this title

Review:

"One of Updike's boldest and most imaginative performances."--Newsweek
"Ellellou is an extraordinary tour-de-force of a character. . . . What a rich, surprising, and often funny novel The Coup is."--The New York Times Book Review
"A very funny book as well as a serious one. It's the work of an intelligent and funny and passionate man--and it's good."--The Washington Post Book World

About the Author:

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.

His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal.

Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0141188952
• ISBN 13: 9780141188959
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320