The Coup

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 author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

“What a rich, surprising, and often funny novel.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A leader,” writes Colonel Hakim Félix Ellelloû, “is one who, out of madness or goodness, takes upon himself the woe of a people. There are few men so foolish.” Colonel Ellelloû 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 the nation of Kush, and the repercussions of this incursion constitute the events of the novel. Colonel Ellelloû tells his own story—always elegantly, and often in the third person—from an undisclosed location in the South of France.