Cry The Beloved Country

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton Cry the Beloved
Country the most famous and important novel in South
Africa’s history was an immediate worldwide bestseller in
1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s
country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.
Cry the beloved country for the unborn child that is the
inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too
deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs
through his fingers nor stand too silent when the setting
sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved
when the birds of his land are singing nor give too much
of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob
him of all if he gives too much. The eminent literary
critic Lewis Gannett wrote “We have had many novels from
statesmen and reformers almost all bad; many novels from
poets almost all thin. In Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved
Country the statesman the poet and the novelist meet in a
unique harmony.” Cry the Beloved Country is the deeply
moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son
Absalom set against the background of a land and a people
riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism
unforgettable for character and incident Cry the Beloved
Country is a classic work of love and hope courage and
endurance born of the dignity of man.