John Updike – Knjiga.hr

The Coup

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:03:40 +0000

A daring political satire set in the fictional West African nation of Kush, this novel is narrated by Colonel Ellellou, a U.S.-educated military ruler who seizes power in a coup and attempts to steer his impoverished, drought-stricken country between superpower pressures and internal unrest. Through Ellellou’s wry, self-justifying voice, the book explores postcolonial identity, Cold War politics, religion, race, and the uneasy ties between America and the developing world. By the Pulitzer Prize–winning American novelist best known for the Rabbit series, it showcases his gift for psychological nuance and moral ambiguity while venturing into bold geopolitical terrain. Readers interested in literary fiction that blends satire with serious political inquiry will find it both provocative and darkly comic.

Memories of the Ford Administration

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:03:14 +0000

Set during the uneasy years following Watergate, this novel follows a middle‑aged American historian who sets out to record both his personal past and the national mood of the Ford era. As he reflects on his academic career, his scholarly preoccupations with nineteenth‑century America, and a complicated web of romantic entanglements, private memory intertwines with public history. The result is a wry, candid meditation on sexuality, marriage, ambition, and the drift of American culture in the 1970s. John Updike, celebrated for the *Rabbit* series and his acute chronicling of American middle‑class life, brings his characteristic wit and psychological insight to this portrait of intellectual and emotional restlessness. Readers drawn to campus novels, political backdrops, and finely observed explorations of desire and self-deception will find much to savor here.

Rabbit is Rich

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:03:01 +0000

Set in the uneasy prosperity of the late 1970s, this third installment of John Updike’s celebrated Rabbit series finds Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom comfortably middle-aged and financially secure, co-owner of a Toyota dealership inherited from his father-in-law. Yet affluence brings its own anxieties. As he navigates a troubled relationship with his son, shifting social currents, and the compromises of long marriage, Rabbit confronts questions of desire, responsibility, and spiritual restlessness beneath the sheen of success. Updike, one of the foremost American novelists of the twentieth century, won the Pulitzer Prize for this volume. With sharp social observation and psychological nuance, he captures the textures of American middle-class life, making this a compelling portrait of prosperity shadowed by doubt.

Gertrude and Claudius

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:02:11 +0000

In this imaginative prelude to *Hamlet*, John Updike re-envisions the lives and desires that precede Shakespeare’s tragedy, focusing on Gertrude and Claudius before they become history’s most famous royal adulterers. Updike traces Gertrude’s early life and first marriage, and gradually develops the attraction between her and Claudius, rendering them not as stock villains but as complex, yearning human beings shaped by passion, ambition, and circumstance. Rich in psychological insight and period detail, the novel explores themes of love, power, guilt, and fate, while echoing the language and atmosphere of the original play. A Pulitzer Prize–winning author known for his elegant prose and keen moral perception, Updike offers a thoughtful, provocative reimagining that will appeal to readers of literary fiction and to anyone intrigued by fresh perspectives on classic works.

Brazil

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:01:53 +0000

John Updike’s sixteenth novel takes place in a stylized Brazil where almost anything is possible, if you are young and in love. Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year-old black child of the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach; their flight into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil’s wild west. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them; his mother curses them, her father harries them with hirelings, and neither lover is absolutely faithful. Yet Tristao and Isabel hold to the faith that each is the other’s fate for life, as they pass – in Shakespeare’s phrase – through nature to eternity. Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-Sixties to the late Eighties, Brazil surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

Rabbit at Rest

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:01:21 +0000

The final novel in John Updike’s celebrated Rabbit series, this Pulitzer Prize–winning work revisits Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom in late middle age as he winters in Florida and confronts declining health, family strain, and the uneasy comforts of prosperity. Now prosperous but restless, Rabbit grapples with a troubled son, shifting American values, and his own mortality. Set against the cultural backdrop of the late 1980s, the novel blends sharp social observation with intimate psychological insight. Updike, one of the foremost American novelists of the twentieth century, brings lyrical precision and moral nuance to a portrait of ordinary life under pressure. A powerful meditation on aging, desire, and the elusive promise of the American dream.

In the Beauty of the Lilies

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:00:53 +0000

Faith ultimately bursts into flame as Updike’s major new novel, charting the lives of one family through four generations, shows readers an America whose dream of perfection is translated into an obsession with God and the Moving Picture. Paterson, New Jersey, 1910: When a Presbyterian minister suddenly loses his faith and leaves the pulpit to become a salesman, he becomes a movie addict as well.

Toward The End Of Time

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:52:14 +0000

In this late novel by a major American novelist, an aging former investment manager lives in coastal Massachusetts in a near-future America unsettled by a limited nuclear war and shifting global power. As society frays at the edges, he retreats into memories, erotic longings, and uneasy reflections on his marriages, children, and neighbors. The book blends domestic realism with speculative elements, using the protagonist’s ruminations to explore mortality, time, desire, faith, and the persistence of history even as the world seems to wind down. Meditative, provocative, and elegiac, it will appeal to readers drawn to character-driven fiction that confronts aging and the end of an era with intelligence and candor.

Pigeon Feathers, and Other Stories

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:33:05 +0000

Zbirka pripovijedaka jednog od najvažnijih američkih pisaca druge polovice 20. stoljeća donosi niz suptilnih, psihološki preciznih priča o odrastanju, vjeri, braku i svakodnevnim krizama američke srednje klase. John Updike, poznat po svojem istančanom stilu i sposobnosti da u običnim situacijama otkrije duboke egzistencijalne napetosti, i ovdje pokazuje izniman osjećaj za detalj i unutarnji život svojih likova. Središnja pripovijetka, po kojoj je knjiga dobila ime, prati dječaka suočenog s religijskom sumnjom i strahom od smrti, istražujući krhku ravnotežu između vjere i razuma. Ostale priče tematiziraju brakove na kušnji, nevjeru, seksualno sazrijevanje, obiteljske odnose i osjećaj otuđenosti u suvremenom društvu. Updike s velikom empatijom i preciznošću prikazuje unutarnje dileme svojih likova, često smještene u prepoznatljiv krajolik američkih predgrađa i manjih gradova. Ono što ovu zbirku čini posebnom jest autorova sposobnost da svakodnevne, naizgled banalne situacije ispuni filozofskom težinom i poetskom ljepotom. Njegov jezik je elegantan, bogat i istodobno pristupačan, a promišljanja o vjeri, tijelu, prolaznosti i identitetu ostaju aktualna i danas. Ova knjiga posebno će se svidjeti čitateljima koji cijene introspektivnu prozu, realistične prikaze intimnih odnosa i književnost koja u malim životnim epizodama pronalazi univerzalna pitanja.

Povratak zeca 1-2

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 18:19:00 +0000