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.

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.

If I could give this 6 stars I would... a magnificent, moving story with extraordinary depth and wisdom.

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #South Africa

This story was written in 1946 by White South African author Alan Paton, and published in 1948 on the eve of the creation Apartheid in South Africa. It is a classic work of protest literature, focussing on the evils of racism, exploitation and colonialism. Paton later started the Liberal Party in South Africa which opposed apartheid. This book was first published in the US as it was unlikely to be published in South Africa at the time.

The story takes us to the village of Ndotsheni in Natal, where Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu minister, is called to go to Johannesburg to see his sister who is ill. Sadly he finds she has become involved in selling liquor and prostitution. He then seeks to find his son Absalom who he eventually discovers in jail having shot and killed a white man. Despite the heartbreak Kumalo must find a way to go on, to fight for the plight of his people and his village.

The book moves between the gentle conversations of Kumalo and some paragraphs questioning where South Africa is headed and the tyranny of the oppression of black people in mines, in the villages and the squatter camps of the metropolis.

This was a moving story, well-written and impacting. The tone is mildly patronising at points, which doesn’t surprise me given it was written nearly eighty years ago, but Paton takes on the important role of becoming a whistleblower on an international level, revealing what was going on in South Africa. You can sense his passion for the country and the vehemence of his beliefs about the evils of racial segregation and exploitation. This is an important work cutting to the heart of a great tragedy.

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.

Just wow. The prose—the characters—the themes—the setting—all, shining.

It reminded me of The Chosen with the contrasting of two fathers and their sons (a favorite trope, if it can be called that, of mine). The writing style reminded me a little of Ursula K. Le Guin's. And in some ways it reminded me of Gilead too.

It's especially meaningful because I've been to South Africa, if only for the tiniest bit of time. And of course the themes are universal and feel deeply relevant to our race-torn society.

Just—the way not everything works out and the really hard, ugly stuff that happens and yet there is a eucatastrophic (word?) abundance of grace and healing and hope (Like no mercy—I expected there to be mercy, and there was, but not in the way I expected. I think a lesser author would have given Absalom mercy—or would have left Kumalo to resign himself to the unfairness and despair at the end. Paton does neither.).

—It suited the white man to break the tribe, he continued gravely. But it has not suited him to build something in the place of what is broken. … They are not all so. There are some white men who give their lives to build up what is broken.
—But they are not enough, he said. They are afraid, that is truth. It is fear that rules this land.

*

—Brother, I am recovered.
Msimangu’s face lights up, but he talks humbly, there is no pride or false restraint.
—I have tried every way to touch you, he says, but I could not come near. So give thanks and be satisfied.

Discovering A Classic Novel

Alan Paton's novel "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1948) somehow escaped me over the years. Paton's novel was already a staple on high school reading lists when I was in school, and I tend to avoid such books. A glance at some of the many reviews here on Amazon suggests that the book continues to be force-fed to students, a situation that discourages appreciative reading. When our book group selected the novel, I became an initially reluctant reader. But I soon realized I had missed a great deal in not reading this book.

Set in South Africa in 1948, Paton's novel examines race relations in that troubled country just before the formal institution of apartheid. The primary character is an elderly Zulu minister, Stephen Kumalo who lives and tends to his congregation in a poor farming community which has depleted its soil by poor farming practices on hills. Steven's brother John, his sister Gertrude and his only son Absolom have left the homestead to try to find their ways in Johannesburg. When Steven receives a message that his sister is in desperate straits, he undertakes the lengthy, expensive rail journey to Johannesburg in search of his family. Steven finds each of the three, and the novel tells their stories. The book develops primarily around Absolom who has become a troubled, delinquent young man. Absolom is arrested and tried for the murder of a young white man, Arthur Jarvis. Arthur's father, James, is a wealthy landholder and near-neighbor of Stephen Kumalo. During the trial of Stephen's son, the two men become close. In his life, Arthur had studied closely South Africa's racial situation and had written and spoken out eloquently for change. With his son's death, the novel shows how James, who had been apathetic on the issue at best, came to understand and share the convictions of his son.

"Cry, the Beloved Country" is immeasurably more than a polemic against racism in South Africa. In my belated reading of the book, I tried to think of how the work transcended its time and place to become a convincing work of art. Here are some of my ideas. The writing style of the book in its lyricism, solemnity, repetition, and detail frequently is more akin to poetry than to fictional narrative. The tone of the book is sad and thoughtful much more than it is critical. Paton seems less inclined to blame any party for the origins of racism in South Africa than he is to understand. He explores how racism developed and he examines the fears of all the participants in the system. The aim is not to condemn but to understand, forgive, and change.

There are beautiful portrayals of South Africa in all its aspects, from the small native communes and compounds to the mines to the metropolis of Johannesburg. The book celebrates reading and the life of the mind primarily through Arthur Jarvis, whose library and thought Paton explores in depth. Abraham Lincoln receives great and devoted attention in this book, showing the universal appeal of this great American president.

More than the portrayal of an unjust social system or the depiction of a complex country, "Cry the Beloved Country" is a religious work. Few, if any characters in this story are entirely evil. Although shown as a person with flaws and a tendency to hurt others, Stephen Kumalo emerges as a committed Christian minister to his people. When he travels to Johannesburg, he meets several other ministers and church officials who, contrary to much literature, are portrayed selflessly and positively.

Several other characters, including a lawyer who defends Stephen's son pro bono ("pro deo"), and a native landlady are shown as unselfish, well-meaning and noble. The book tells its story of hope, forgiveness, and correction of injustice without derogating.

On my reading, I found "Cry, the Beloved Country" in large part a religious novel of an unusual and profound spirit in the way it approached its themes. I was drawn by the goodness and sincerity of the characters. The book helps show what religion, Christianity in particular, can be at its best in a troubled time. Forgiveness and not condemnation is the overriding theme of the book. I was grateful to take the opportunity to read Paton's novel at last.

Robin Friedman

This is probably my top read so far this year. The writing is so simple and beautiful and almost poetic. The story made me sad and angry and hopeful and glad. What a rich and beautiful book.

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.

What an extraordinary book. South Africa first came to my attention in the early 80s, when as a young teen my social consciousness was awakened by the MTV generation shouting "I won't play Sun City". Taking into account all that has occurred from since Paton's gentle prose was penned in the mid 1940s to the glittering showboat of the 1980's rock star protests to today's post-apartheid reality of continued violence and oppression in South Africa, reading this novel was so moving and chilling. How little and how much has changed.

THis is a beautifully written story that reveals the multiple faces of life in South Africa, that shows the conflict without imposing judgment, morality or condescension. It demonstrates the author's deep love for his country, his sorrow as a witness to its destruction and not a little hope for its future.

My only regret is that it took me so long to discover this book, but perhaps I wasn't ready to appreciate it before now. I'm just grateful that it is now a permanent addition to our library!

Such a great book. It had deeply enriched my understanding of South Africa during that period of time and it has strengthened my resolve to be a humanist and not be blindly patriotic to any country, group or man based on my own identity or insecurities.

I especially liked the use of the atmosphere to relay themes, the dying land, the rickety church that the people made do with, the rain that seemed to bring great (but slow) change. I like when the novel is about more than just actions and dialogue.

A father and son, a priest and his people, the materially rich and the spiritually rich—this book reflects the human condition with a series of comparisons. Set in South Africa in a time of growing racial tensions, the balance of the story is maintained with contrasting moments that round out a tale of loss, grief, and corruption with profound hope, prospective, and love. The little rituals of life take center stage as the author reminds us to value the things that matter most.

This is one of the best books I’ve ever picked up. The rhythm of the writing, the weight of the themes, and the beauty of the emotions that make up this story are each alone enough to make the book notable. Together, they make this book a must read.