The acknowledged interpreter of the American suburban soul, John Updike now forays into territory as rich as it is new.

          The delicate, delectably empty and drought-prone land of Kush is ruled over by one Colonel Hakim Felix Ellellou, a mordant, outrageous, self-mocking and protean-tongued dictator. Add revolution – Soviet support, American intervention – John Updike’s seductive, spicy and poetic writing and, as Paul Theroux says, the result is "a coup".