Africa's Politics and Religion in John Updike's The Coup

John Updike's The Coup is freewheeling satire that defines the relationship between the West and Africa. For many of Western authors, and Updike is not an exception, the appeal of Africa is its "Otherness", its difference from the contemporary West. The novel is a dramatization of the political events that characterized post-colonial Africa. It also concerns government mismanagement in the black continent, and has little details that showcase the Cold War post-colonial chaos that was sub-Saharan Africa. Through his imagery of Africa and Africans in The Coup, Updike seems to convey the impression that events in much of the so-called Third World reflect not merely the institutional dilemmas of post-colonial politics in Africa, but an existential condition hardly amenable to human solutions.