زمانی‌ که ترس بر ملتی حکومت می‌کند؛ کیست که بتواند از سرزمین محبوب خود لذتی ببرد؟

آلن بيتون

و کوره‌راه به خاک سرخ ایندوتشنی می‌انجامد. سرزمین فقیری است . سرزمین پیرمردها و پیرزن‌ها و بچه‌ها، اما وطن این جاست. ذرت به سختی به اندازه ی قد آدمی می‌رسد . اما وطن همین جاست.

کتاب جزو لیست صدتایی رمان‌های پیشنهادی رضا امیرخانی بود. اسم‌ش گیراست و در پایین‌ترین طبقه‌ی قفسه‌ی یک کتاب‌فروشی، نزدیک پارکت به وضوح خاک می‌خورد که چشمم روی عنوانش توقف کرد.
برایم جالب است که آخرین چاپ این کتاب مربوط به سال 1373 است و بعد از آن تجدید چاپ نشده‌است.
داستان در آفریفای جنوبیِ اوایل دوران صنعتی شدن اتفاق می‌افتد. وقتی اروپایی‌ها ساکنان غیر بومی این کشور بر معادن و منابع آفریقای جنوبی سیطره پیدا کرده‌اند. شهرهای جدید با نام‌های اروپایی ساخته‌اند و بومیان را به بیگاری گرفته‌اند.
یک کشیش در جستجوی خواهر و برادر و پسرش که پس از مهاجرت از قبیله به ژوهانسبورگ نامه‌ای برایشان نفرستاده‌اند، راهی این شهرمی‌شود. پسرش سفیدپوستی را کشته‌است و او درگیر مسائل و مشکلات او می‌شود.
از نظر من این کتاب بیش از این که یک داستان باشد، یک صدای اعتراض است برای آن چه که سفیدپوست‌ها و رفتار و قانون‌شان بر سر بومیان آفریقای جنوبی آورده‌است. این کتاب، ضداستعماری نیست و تقبیحی علیه تجاوز اولیه‌ی اروپاییان به آفریقای جنوبی در آن دیده نمی‌شود. اما چیزی که می‌شود به وضوح در آن حس کرد این است که استعمارگری با یک جامعه چه می‌کند. این کتاب بیش از آن که یک داستان باشد، یک راهکار است، یک نقد است بر عملکرد اروپاییان. نویسنده با توسعه مخالف نیست، او می‌گوید ما رفتارهایی را با بومیان داشتیم، که درست نبود، اما ما نمی‌دانستیم که این رفتارها درست نیست، حالا که می‌دانیم و حالا که پیامدهایش را دیده‌ایم، رفتارمان را اصلاح کنیم. نویسنده منتقد رفتارهای اروپاییان می‌شود. جوانان بومی روزبه روز بزهکار تر می‌شوند و اروپاییان مخالف آموزش آن‌ها هستند و برای آن که مخالفت خورد را توجیه کنند به آن رنگ دینی می‌بخشند و پای تقدیر و خدا را به موضوع باز می‌کنند، در حالی که نیت واقعی آن است که آگاهی باعث می‌شود بومیان علیه سیاست‌های استعماری اروپاییان بشورند.
در این کتاب شخصیت‌های متفاوتی وجود دارند که هر کدام نماد نوعی طرز فکر در جامعه‌ی آفریقای جنوبی یا هر جامعه‌ی دیگری هستند. جالب آن است که این داستان و طرز تفکرها منحصر به آفریقای جنوبی نیستند و قرابت‌هایی که بین آفریقای جنوبی و کشورهایی شبیه کشور ما وجود دارد، خواندن این کتاب را دلپذیرتر می‌کند.
شاید این کتاب غم‌انگیزترین و در عین حال امیدبخش‌ترین کتابی باشد که خوانده‌ام. اما یکی از دوست‌داشتنی‌ترین‌ها نیز هست.
+ در دسته کتاب‌هایی قرار می‌گیرد که همه باید بخوانند.

An ambitious book that would have benefitted from being much longer. Paton tries to portray the complex nation that is South Africa - criminologically, ethnically, linguistically, economically, even ecologically - and gives us a snapshot in just 240 pages.

His attempts at rendering the language problem in South Africa make the novel difficult to read. It took me sometime to realise that the writer was using different styles in English to indicate when speakers are using different languages. Later on, Paton gets overwhelmed by this and resorts to telling us which language is being used. However the damage has already been done. Nearly all the dialogue in book one is uttered in Zulu, and there is hardly a complex sentence in it. This is wearing for English speakers, and also a sign of 'unsophisticated' English speech. My interpretation was that Paton was portraying Africans - even ordained priests - as uneducated and that this was patronising, an aspect of the white racial paternalism that the book seemed to be upholding almost to the end.

I don't know if Zulu allows of the construction of complex sentences, but the issue of style shifting and code switching was much better handled in  A Brief History of Seven Killings where it was made apparent the characters were exploiting degrees of creolization of English for their own communicative needs. That was also a difficult read, but my impression was that that was my fault rather than the author's.

The ethos of white racial paternalism runs through the economic and ecological strands of the story. It gives us a summary of the significance of gold mining to the South African economy and how it was dependent on heavily coerced African labour. Less well done is the explanation of the ecological problems that are driving African labour off the land and into the cities in the first place. The fault is placed with traditional African methods; over dependence on cattle, not planting wood for fuel. and ploughing down hill rather than on the level. Luckily, the benevolent white man is around to educate and finance the African farmer. However, I find it hard to accept that methods that were adequate for millenia should suddenly fail once the white man arrives. More historical perspective is required for this story to be persuasive, not least the the realisation that rapid industrialisation brought exactly the same societal problems of family failure, substance abuse and criminality to Europeans as it did to Africans. But in South Africa that is hidden under the veil of racial politics.

One thread of the story I found compelling has the presence of 'hundreds of books' on Abraham Lincoln in Arthur Jarvis's library. Explicitly drawing the parallel between the racial politics in the United States and the Union of South Africa. But this wasn't explored. In the US slavery took root as a means of legitimizing the restriction of economic opportunities among different ethnic groups. One the outcomes of Apartheid was a means of preventing Afrikaners from facing economic competition from Blacks. But this relationship between economic pecking orders and racial pecking orders is much more thoroughly explored in  The Grass is Singing.

More historical or at least narrative perspective is also required in the treatment of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo and his family. How was it exactly that his son, Absalom, left home and fell into a life of crime? Is that a usual outcome for the sons of African clergy? How is it his brother, John became an influential labour leader but has no religious faith? How did these brothers take such different paths? A bigger novel could have told us how (Wilbur Smith certainly would have). It could also have explained the ecological degradation of Ixópo, after all it happened in Kumalo's lifetime. The treatment of John Kumalo also adds to the white paternalist ethos. Here is a man who has risen to a position of leadership among Africans independently of white support, but he is shown as morally weak, disloyal and as a danger to his own followers. It's worth pointing out that powerful oratory was the hallmark of the pre-imprisonment Nelson Mandela. The man who ultimately prevented black South Africans "from turning to hating", when white South Africans had finally "turned to loving".

But of that was in the future when this book was written, it was published on the eve of the introduction of Apartheid. This gives the modern reader a terrible sense that things are going to get a lot worse before they got better. A sense that the writer doesn't seem to share until the final, brilliant closing section of book, when Kumaló goes up to the mountaintop. Here his story is narrated in third person English and not a bad first person translation of Zulu. Here he recognises that his career in the Church of England lets others see him as "a white man's dog", that European culture and technology is not just seen as the salvation of the African people, but may be the cause of their immediate problems. Here the darkness that still awaits Africa is finally apprehended.

Another central challenge this book presented me with is that it is written from the perspective of a confirmed and active Christianity, one that like Rev. Kumaló strikes me as naive. Yet when you get up onto the mountaintop you get to appreciate how faith can be a way to give focus to the complexity of life in South Africa. Christianity is after all the ultimate paternalist ethos.

Personally, I did not find this worked super well as an audio book, but I am not sure whether that stemmed from the book itself or the way I listen to audio books (3x).
Still, as you can tell from my rating, I enjoyed it! I really need to go back because I think in print it would garner 5 stars.
It was a very moving book. A little bit angsty, perhaps, but never to the point of distraction. The grief and family dynamics really shine through.
Been on my to-read list for a very long time and I am glad I finally got to it.

I read this book in high school and loved it for the story. That was in the 1960's when apartheid was in full swing and Mandela was in prison. This time I loved the story (fortunately some of the racial and political problems have been solved) but was also able to appreciate the beautiful, lyrical prose. I have shed many tears while reading this, most in last section of the book, which is the section that brings some hope to the situation in a 1940's South Africa that is pre-apartheid but a country that is mostly inhabited by poor blacks under the thumb of a few rich whites. Despite the inequities which are abundantly shown, this book also embodies courage, compassion and Christian values. On a personal level, I thought many times while reading this on the aptness of the title for the situation in my country today. Cry, The Beloved Country for the state of race relations and political civility that seem to be tearing us apart in this presidential election season.

Just arrived from France through BM.

Page 105:
Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry laud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.

Page 109:
And some cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black, and black without white, where black can farm their own land and mine their own minerals and administer their own laws.

Page 111:
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 a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Page 187:
We say we withhold education because the black child has not the intelligence to profit by it; we withhold opportunity to develop gifts because black people has no gifts; we justify our action by saying that it took us thousands of years to achieve our own advancement, and it would be foolish to suppose that it will take the black man any lesser time, and that therefore there is no need for hurry.

What the..?!?!
Why is this rating so high?
This book was tortuous to read. Every page, DESPITE the wordings was worse than getting my eyelashes pulled.

Oprah.
Seriously? Seriously Oprah?

Here's my summary of it:
Man goes to find son who dies because he killed some guy, man goes back home.

The end.

The story follows a reverend as he travels from his protected village into the bustling city of Johannesburg, in search of his son and his sister, both of whom have encountered troubles. He finds that his sister has become a prostitute, and his son is on trial for murder. The sentence of death for his son is devastating for the reverend. He returns home to his village with the bastard son of his sister (as she has disappeared), as well as the pregnant girlfriend of his soon-to-be executed son. With his wife, they hope to do right by both their new charges, in their simple village ways.

His journey also provides insight into the economic divisions splitting the country, as black-and-white issues threaten to erupt. Inequities abound, and this is the way it has been for many years, but many are refusing tradition and demanding change.

In his return home, his heart breaks over the loss of his beloved son, as has new experiences with which to view his beloved country.

I found the book too “folksy” for my taste. I mostly just wanted the book to end.

I can’t recommend this book.

After hearing of Bryson's call to South Africa, it made me remember this book I read years ago. It is a fantastic book that opens your eyes to the cultural and political challenges in South Africa. Since I read it so long ago, the following is an "official" review:


"Cry, the Beloved Country is a monument to the future. One of South Africa's leading humanists, Alan Paton vividly captured his eloquent faith in the essential goodness of people." — Nelson Mandela*

The book is Alan Paton's ode to his complex homeland—a land that Westerners have come to understand, in part, because of the eloquence of his passionate work. Inspired in many ways by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country brings heart and humanity to the struggles of black South Africans. First published in America, it brought a new international focus to a South African conflict that had previously been shrouded in secrecy and shadow. From the time of its initial publication, to its immediate worldwide success and recognition, to this very day, Paton's novel has been an anthem to racial tolerance and understanding.

The novel explores several powerful themes, among them compassion, forgiveness, humility and racial injustice and prejudice. While the main storyline tells the tale of two families struggling to overcome hardship, South Africa herself is also a main character. According to the author, the title came from three or four passages that make mention of his beloved country, including: "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…for fear will rob him of all if he gives too much." This is a novel that will make you fall in love with South Africa—with her rich land, her struggles, her beauty, her passion and her people.

What an outstanding novel. There were portions of this book that were deeply moving for me. Given the influence of South African literature throughout the novel, I don't think it is for everyone. However, it was the right book for me in this season. I read it thanks to a book club I'm in and I'm so thankful I did. I don't return to fiction books very often, but this is one I will turn to again, I'm sure of it.

Though not published until early in 1948 (and the events leading to its submission for publication, which the author describes in the Author's Note at the beginning, were rather unusual) Cry the Beloved Country was written in late 1946, and is set in the author's present. It's fair to say that it's generally recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of world literature produced in the 20th century, or indeed any century, and hands down the greatest novel ever written (to date) by a South African writer. (Ironically, it was first published in the U.S., and probably wouldn't have found a publisher in South Africa at the time.) I've regarded it as a must-read for decades. Now that I've at last read it, I greatly regret (as I so often do, with too many books) that I didn't do so much sooner!

The backdrop and central concern of the novel, of course, is race relations in the “beloved country.” Having been granted independence from British rule in 1931, though still part of the Commonwealth and recognizing the king of England as its king, South Africa was (and still is) a nation with a population overwhelmingly black (about 80%), but a nation at that time dominated politically and economically by the descendants of British and Dutch (Afrikaners) colonial settlers. While the fully-developed legal system of racial segregation, or apartheid, would not be officially enacted in all of its particulars until 1948 (soon after this book was published), key components of it were already in place, and the rest of it already enforced by custom. With less than 20% of the population, whites claimed ownership of 90% of the land, owned all of the mines and industries, and completely controlled the government, since blacks were disenfranchised by law. While living standards and incomes for the white community were generally comparable to those of “developed” countries, the black community lived almost entirely in Third World poverty, and was systematically kept in that state to create a permanent pool of cheap labor for white employers. Education was segregated, and provided only inadequately for blacks. Whites and blacks virtually never interacted on any footing of equality, and virtually never had cross-racial or cross-cultural friendships. In that environment, few people of either race thought of the other as individual fellow humans; rather, they were just an undifferentiated mass of alien and possibly hostile Other. Blacks generally resented white exploitation (with good reason); whites generally feared blacks as a potential threat to their own lifestyles, and were tempted to subscribe to theories of black racial inferiority as justification for keeping them subservient.

Paton doesn't start his novel out with a description of this state of affairs (although, in his very short first chapter, he does set the stage by a physical description of his rural setting, with its terrain greatly damaged by human abuse of it, and not able to support its people), because it's something every South African reader would have been viscerally aware of to begin with. So, as his readers would, he just presupposes it, and goes from there. When our story really gets going, in chapter 2, we meet our protagonist, Rev. Stephen Kumalo. He's the priest of the small black Anglican church in the village of Ndotsheni, in Natal (which is, as I understand it from the geographical clues in the book –I don't know a lot about South Africa's internal geography-- in the southwestern, historically British-dominated, part of the country), a 60-year-old man living quietly with his wife on a scanty income. Like many of their fellow Zulus, Stephen's brother-in-law (husband of his sister Gertrude, 25 years younger than Stephen) has been gone a long time. He moved to the great city of Johannesburg (pop. ca. 700,000 at that time) looking for work in the mines, and hasn't been heard from for quite a while. Gertrude finally went to Johannesburg to look for him, and also went silent; Stephen's only child, a young man named Absalom, followed in his turn, looking for her, and he's no longer writing home either. But now, a letter written by a fellow black clergyman has arrived from Johannesburg, informing him that Gertrude is “very sick” and that he needs to come. That journey will be a fateful and pivotal one, marked by tragedy --but also by unexpected light that can shine in darkness. It will bring him together with both familiar faces –including his younger brother John, a fairly prosperous Johannesburg carpenter and influential orator in black political circles, long estranged from both Stephen and the church-- and with entirely new acquaintances, most surprisingly a Ndotsheni neighbor, well-to-do white farmer James Jarvis. These two would normally never have spoken to each other; but fate sometimes has strange twists....

This novel is a cri de coeur for fundamental justice and decency in relations between human beings, delivered with powerful force and clarity. But while I won't say it has no passages of straightforward exposition (well integrated into the text), it derives its force and clarity from the way its message is embedded in an actual involving and emotionally compelling story about characters who become as real as any you meet in your everyday life. And it's a message which recognizes that justice and decency have to flow from love, which means they'll never be achieved by hate and never fostered by fear. The author's vision for the country he loves isn't one that demonizes whites, but one that calls on British-descended whites like Paton himself, Afrikaners (and those two groups, though both white, didn't especially like or trust each other, either) and blacks of all tribes to come together in harmony to build a society that works for everybody. That particular note of inclusion and reconciliation comes from the grounding of this vision in Christian belief. Stephen's faith (and that of other characters, of both races) isn't coincidental to the story; it mirrors and expresses the author's own, and this is a profoundly Christian novel, not just from having some clerical characters, but from depicting lived Christianity in its warp and woof, and inculcating a Christian message as its central reason for being written.

Stylistically, the most notable characteristic here is that Paton doesn't use quotation marks. However, when a character's speech is reproduced, he clearly indicates that a character is speaking, and who it is; and in dialogue, speeches by different characters are on different lines, and set off by a dash. As a rule, I don't care for fictional prose that affects a departure from normal grammatical rules, and normally wouldn't read it. But here I was motivated enough to give the text a chance, and quickly discovered that, at least in this instance, the author didn't sacrifice clarity on the altar of quirkiness; I never had a problem identifying who was speaking. His diction is highly readable, often beautiful and lyrical. He knew black culture, both urban and tribal, and black speech patterns, well enough to bring them to vivid life (okay, I don't have any first-hand knowledge myself; but I can recognize the ring of authenticity when I read it!), and had a good eye for his country's varied landscapes and cityscapes. Though himself white, he writes black characters very realistically, believably getting inside Stephen's head in particular (Stephen and Jarvis will be our two viewpoint character here, and we get much more of the former's viewpoint than the latter's). There's also a lot of serious social insight here that goes beyond the obvious, such as the recognition of the problematic effects of the destruction of traditional tribal community by the white government and white-run economy (which created an anomie and rootlessness in the black community), and of the role of farmland destruction, through overgrazing and practices that maximized soil erosion, in exacerbating rural poverty.

Alan Paton (1903-1988) is described by Wikipedia as a “strong Christian," whose “faith was one of the reasons he was so strongly opposed to apartheid.” At the time he wrote this book, he was principal of a reformatory for youthful black offenders (and very successful in effecting rehabilitation of those in his care); and yes, that experience is relevant to this novel.

Despite the changes in South Africa since 1994, many of the problems and challenges depicted here still remain; and the author's call for racial harmony and cooperation remains as necessary –and too often as elusive-- as it was in 1946. And even though it's delivered in the context of a particular setting, his moral, spiritual and social messages are universal, relevant wherever injustice and fear of the Other is rife; which is to say, always and everywhere. There aren't very many novels that I would actually recommend to all readers. This is one of them.

Very absorbing read of two fathers in South Africa during apartheid, one black and one white. The son of the white father is well known in Johannesburg as a prominent speaker against apartheid and is loved by both communities, when is he killed by the son of the black man. The two fathers are distraught, confused, and suffering. Get. The. Tissues.