"Cry, the Beloved Country" is an important story set in 1940s South Africa with its tensions between the various ethnic and racial groups, and between urban and rural life. Reverend Kumalo leaves his rural village to bring back his sister and his son from Johannesburg. Both of them have been influenced by bad company and the corruption in the lawless city. His son has been involved in a terrible crime.

The story later tells of the kindness of a white plantation owner, inspired by his son's work for social justice, who helps Reverend Kumalo's Zulu village. Kumalo feels that a strong family life and a strong village community are very necessary, but the young people often move away for financial reasons. The author's love for beautiful South Africa, his deep compassion, and his dismay over racial injustice act as a backdrop for this moving story.

Cry, The Beloved Country is set in South Africa during apartheid. In the first section of the book, Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo leaves his home in the countryside to search for his wayward sister and son in Johannesburg. He gradually uncovers that his son has turned to a life of crime. He then learns that his son has shot and killed a white man, Mr. Jarvis, during a robbery. Ironically, Mr. Jarvis was working to help the native population. These tragic events take place within the framework of the larger chaos and injustice that is taking place in South Africa. Pastor Kumalo lends a sad, quiet dignity as the story's narrator, but I was somewhat disappointed by the book. It does read like the kind of book that you are forced to read in high school, one that beats you over the head with its message.

Heartbreaking and moving story of two fathers in almost-apartheid South Africa--1948. One, a Zulu Anglican pastor whose son by accident kills the son of a white landowner, who lives near to the pastor and his church. The lives of the two fathers become entwined.

In this novel the author is both novelist and poet. Beautifully written, with deep characterizations. A short accessible read. A genuine classic!

It's like Faulkner on valium. Were it not for the utter miserableness of South African literature this book would not have stood out as slightly less miserable than the rest.

Alan Paton lays the biblical overtones thick as peanut butter and jelly. The tone is pretty awesome at the start, but it becomes insipid as soon as it's clear that this book has no substance. Because the book has no plot: a crime is committed, justice is done, and the patriarch goes up onto the mountain for the night to pray and feel sort of okay.

Just once, once, I would like to read a happy South African novel. Is that too much to ask? It's as if the South African collective is so addicted to victimhood that books like this are needed to excuse and justify misery as being patriotic.

This is one I wish I would have read long ago! Wonderfully written, thought-provoking, and though it was sorrowful subject matter, it was easy to read and understand. I recommend this one to all!

Much has been written about this novel, and about the writing of it, that it is the stuff of legend. An unknown writer is discovered by American friends with literary connections, the manuscript is almost lost en-route to the publisher in New York, the last few chapters are delivered in a breathless gasp in person, and voila: a book is born that touches the heartbeat of a nation, and of the world.

If everyone, black and white, in South Africa had developed a similar relationship with each other as the Rev. Kumalo and landowner Jarvis had between them, there would have been no need for the dreaded Apartheid regime that was to follow this book’s publication. Kumalo’s son Absalom leaves his impoverished village to make it in big, bad Johannesburg and ends up killing Jarvis’s son(also living in the city of gold and working for the emancipation of blacks) during a home burglary. And yet, despite this void of loss that adds to the prevailing societal void segregating black from white, the two fathers are able to transcend their differences to work for the good of the little village and to forgive and enlighten each other.

This is a novel of voices; the voice of the Zulu in the narrative of Kumalo as he searches for his son in the shanty towns of Johannesburg and witnesses the marginalization of those who flee the village in search of illusory riches; the voices of those very marginalized, as they are led to build shacks on the edge of town; the voices of the police; the voices of the judge and prosecutor who damn Absalom without mercy; the voice of Jarvis as he searches for the message of redemption in this disaster that has befallen his family, and the voice of the intrusive narrator who paints the land for us and sets up each scene in biblical tones.

“They are afraid because they are so few,” is Kumalo’s assessment of the white man in South Africa, and yet his son, Absalom, kills out of fear too. In fact, fear is the villain of the piece, dividing white and black. On the other hand, Kumalo’s brother, John, a businessman in Johannesburg, is the embodiment of he who has sold his soul in order to survive and thrive under circumstances in which the tribe and its stabilizing norms have been destroyed and replaced by the survival of the fittest ethic of the big city.

Powerful scenes dot the novel: Jarvis and Kumalo sitting in the village church, constantly shifting seats to escape rainwater leaking through the crumbling roof; the planting of the sticks by white and black to build a dam for the betterment of the village; The Bishop suggesting that Kumalo leave his decaying church when the latter’s purpose for being there is just bearing fruit; Kumalo’s disgraced sister Gertrude discussing escape to the nunnery with Absalom’s pregnant wife, another fallen woman; and Kumalo’s trip to the top of the mountain while somewhere else in the country his son is facing the hangman’s noose.

The liberation of South Africa’s blacks is still many years away, Kumalo realizes, for he is “the white man’s dog” content with the scraps offered to him, while the next generation, like the agricultural demonstrator, is looking for something more substantial, something that came almost fifty years after this novel was published, and two years after the author’s death.

That Apartheid came into being soon after the book was released is an irony; perhaps in some small way the novel contributed to a resurgence of the fear described within its pages, a fear that fed the reviled regime and ran out of steam when noble leaders like Nelson Mandela were able to emulate Jarvis and Kumalo and teach South Africans that forgiveness was the more enduring path to peace.

I last read this book in High School. I had forgotten, or failed to appreciate, the brilliance of this story. I liked the way the story is told through the experiences of the two fathers and the style of the writing. I also liked how the book looked at the various views of the whites and blacks which so bought to life the arguments presented in The Colonizer and the Colonized and was how Paton almost predicted the future of apartheid and what happened when apartheid ended.

In a small village in South Africa, a little child runs in to deliver a letter to the priest of the village. After reading, Reverend Stephen Kumalo realizes he has to journey immediately to Johannesburg to look for his son and sister. So he packs with trepidation, not knowing what will happen and where exactly to look for them.

This is the opening of Cry, the beloved country. What secrets lies in Johannesburg? Why did they never send a letter home? Why is Reverend Msimangu insisting he comes immediately? Nothing would have prepared him for he is about to discover. His son Absalom has a child, and he is in prison for killing a white man. And his sister? she is now a prostitute.

In its 200 and something pages, this book covers extensively cultural, political, religious, and philosophical territories: Apartheid, union strikes, racism, Christianity, the judicial system, social justice, and segregation.

Paton did not disappoint, a prison superintendent turned writer, his interest in his characters and their situation leans heavily towards their symbolic and elegiac aspects.

With poetry and pathos, he writes: "The truth is that our Christian civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma. We believe in the brotherhood of man, but we do not want it in South Africa. We believe that God endows men with diverse gifts, and that human life depends for its fullness on their employment and enjoyment, but we are afraid to explore this belief too deeply. We believe in help for the underdog, but we want him to stay under. "

There are a lot of weary, melancholy wisdom in this book that transcends the literary, but one stuck with me. 

Towards the end of the book, Reverend Stephen Kumalo echoed the young black priest, Msimangu, fear of hardening racial attitudes, "I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating"

If you want to read something that will change your perspective of the world, and it's shifting realities, then you should read this book.

Paton was of course right when he said, "It is a story of the beauty and terror of human life, and it cannot be written again because it cannot be felt again."

I wanted to like this book more than I did. If I'm awarding star ratings for the books message, then it's 5 stars. However, if I'm honest about how much I enjoyed the reading experience, or how eager I was to pick it up, then I have to admit that I didn't love it. In terms of the story, I cannot fault the book. There is nothing I would change about the plot, all the themes of heartbreak were perfectly placed. There was also inspiration to be found in the end message, which again, was faultless.

So what was wrong? Well, at times the grammar was confusing. It wasn't always clear who was talking or which characters were being spoken about, so I needed to re-read passages trying to make sense of what was happening, which removed me from the story. I also felt a disconnect with all of the characters, I really didn't care about any of them, which wasn't what I expected from such an emotional book. Perhaps this was due to the sentence structure, or perhaps I'm just cold and heartless, or maybe I've read too many other heartbreaking stories to be affected by this one. I'm not sure I can put my finger on what didn't work and in retrospect this is a much better book than I felt it was while reading. A complicated 3-4 stars for me.

I’ve never been to South Africa, the setting of this novel. But having spent a number of years in West Africa, I’ve observed firsthand the intricate dynamics that unfold when foreign elements are introduced to ancient societies.

Economic development has both helped and hurt Africa. Apartheid was a tragic consequence, as were low-paid and dangerous mining jobs. Roads, trains, hospitals and schools were benefits, assuming a better quality of life was desired. It was the corporations that were largely responsible for the transportation systems. They needed to move efficiently move goods and services in order to make a profit. It was the missionaries that initially introduced education and healthcare. These were established to proclaim the Gospel in both word and deed.

Ironically, I read this book not because of its African theme (though I appreciated that too), but because it was recommended as an insightful peek into how suffering and ministry go hand-in-hand. The main character, Kumalo, is an aging native pastor. The first time he ever ventures from his village to Johannesburg is to locate a wayward son and a younger sister who’s turned to prostitution.

The backdrop is post-WWII South Africa. Race relations are severely strained as the indigenous population begins to push back against the injustice of an exploitive system. Cities suffer from overpopulation and farmlands languish from poor agricultural practices. Kumalo is a well-respected and godly man. But the tragedy he faces threatens to break him.

It is here that Jarvis is introduced. As a white farmer and landowner, Jarvis represents all that Kumalo is not. But it is shared suffering that brings them together when by all appearances it should have forever kept them apart.

The author does not attempt to vilify the fact that Kumalo has embraced Christianity. There is no not-so-hidden agenda that bemoans the introduction of Christianity to pagan tribes. Instead, it is made clear that Kumalo is a flawed but sincere believer who turns to the Lord in his time of need. He lives, as we all do, in a world corrupted by sin. And he feels the pain and suffering of sin at work in the lives of those he loves.

Neither black nor white, native or Afrikaner is exalted. There are those who fight for justice and pursue peace on both sides. It’s a political novel, economic even. But mainly, it is a story of redemption as all the best stories are. Out of the ashes of brokenness rise, in most unexpected ways, answers to prayer.

“Why was it given to one man to have his pain transmuted into gladness? Why was it given to one man to have such an awareness of God?”

Read Sara's review. It is perfect.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...