Just when I thought I had a handle on this book, it got really complicated. After getting over the shock of how much South African history and turmoil were skimmed over or ignored completely in my history classes, I felt like this story outlined a pretty clear cut good guy vs an obvious bad guy. My initial thoughts were that the natives were a perfectly content group of people who were just fine on their own until the Europeans stepped in and muddled up their entire culture. I thought Johannesburg represented the whites (the crime, all the immoral behavior, the fast-paced city life, and the constant quest for more gold, more development, more, more, more) and the native life was represented by Kumalo's village (few possessions, close family and community ties, and the prevalent church). But I should've known real life doesn't come in neat and tidy little boxes. And this situation was much more complicated than that. At any rate, this story taught me a lot about South Africa and the westernized "help" that white people are so anxious to provide. And the loose ends leave me searching for more South African literature!

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.

This was my first introduction to apartheid South Africa, and oh did it blow me away! Fantastic narrative concentrating on the human dimensions of a political tragedy. Thank God this abominable system is no more.

I would definitely include this book in my personal top 10. I don't claim to have read all of the great books, but the story is powerfully told, and the message is profound. I don't remember if I read this in school (or was supposed to read it in school) but it is one that I will come back to again.
If you are bothered by non-standard syntax and editing or words/names that you can't pronounce, then you might not enjoy this book. I will admit to a bias in favor of "voice," but I honestly felt that was one of the important elements of the story.
Now for a bit of a rant. Many reviewers have commented that the lack of quotation marks bothered them. Perhaps they would have preferred more pictures as well, since Paton used lots of words to describe the places, and scenes, and it must have been somewhat taxing for such reviewers to actually imagine it. I am sure that it made skimming the book difficult too. In fact, maybe he should just have had it written as a series of news articles, with appropriate editing staff making sure that it would be easily readable by the lowest common denominator. Heaven forbid we should actually have to think about what we are reading.

It's hard to really write a description of this book. Yes, there is plot and structure and story, but the book isn't really about that. It is a book about love and grief and hope and despair. It's about fathers love for their children, despite their choices, about love for one's country and homeland, even when its structure is not ideal or right. It's about how wrong and right choices both effect not only ourselves but those around us with far-reaching ripples. It's about poetry and beauty even in the ugliest of ashes. It's about change and those who have the heart to work for change, but also about tradition and those who cling to the good things that should remain.

Paton wrote in a kind of back and forth prose and poetry which flowed so beautifully together that while I noticed the switch from one to the other, they formed such a cohesive whole that it just felt natural. It's a juxtaposition of the harshness of desolate land and when people are ugly to one another, with the beatify of a restored land and the soulful beauty of what happens when people choose to reach out. It may be set in South Africa, but the themes of inequality, differences and similarities between people of different cultures, urban vs. rural and the clash of the old and the young are timeless. Well worth the read.
4.5/5

I read the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version of this when I was 12 or 13, then read the unabridged version around 2008. They might as well have been two different books.

Read Harder has really delivered some winners for me this year. This is one I've been meaning to read for so long, and now I've read it, I can't believe how long it took me to get here. Paton's most celebrated novel is a novel about a place, and how inextricably a place can be linked to our sense of self. It is also a novel about how a place we love can betray us, and how we can betray it. This novel, more than anything else I've read, has made me feel like I understand South Africa- a place where diverse race and class make for complex and often brutal social conflicts. Paton is expert in his crafting of setting and development of character. While the end of this novel is as brutal as its beginning, it really is an important and beautiful story.

Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Really glad Well Read Mom chose this one.

Well written and painfully descriptive of the apartheid in Soith Africa.

I got a bit lost in the middle for a few chapters but it tighten the up for a strong finish.

This book is one that will stay with me.

It defies the descriptors - beautiful, yes, but spare; evocative, yes, but universal; finely wrought, yes, but poured out in one extended cry for justice.

Paton weaves together parallel lives; an odyssey or two (physical and spiritual); lost sheep and prodigals to teach us of place and identity and cultures in a way that haunts and convicts and leads us to do more.

Paton explores ideas of justice, politics, economics, religion, and culture. Sometimes, they seem like expositional asides - mines, stock market, etc -, but always they tie back into the story and the choices the characters make.

Paton's structure was perfectly executed. From following Kumalo in Book I and Jarvis in Book II; their own paths to discovery how best to serve their beloved South Africa and their people. Book III the drawing them together. Yes. When Kumalo's and Jarvis' paths cross in Johannesburg, yet not in their common home region, the reader feels the weight of the separation of communities. Separation and non-interaction is the problem. The two strands are woven.

It isn't a long book, each chapter is easy to approach, but it is a feeling book. I ended with 50 pages to go and tears streaming down my face. There are ends and there is hope. There is despair and there is a sun.

This is a book that leaves one aching for reconciliation and believing that it is possible.

5000 stars.

n  The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again. n

First published in 1948, shortly before racial segregation became official state policy in South Africa, Alan Paton's debut novel is a quiet, but powerful book, whose impact lingers on long after its last page is turned.

Much has been said about Cry, the Beloved Country, and although decades have passed since its initial publication the novel continues to be as moving and touching as it was when it first appeared. At its heart it is a tragedy - the tragedy of its protagonist, the Zulu priest Stephen Kumalo, who leaves his village and ventures to the metropolis of Johannesburg in search of his missing son, Absalom. Behind the personal story of pastor Kumalo lies the tragedy of post-colonial South Africa itself; with its beautiful, bountiful land locked away and kept in the hands of the white minority, forcing the majority black population to exploit what little resources they were allotted and in turn creating conditions for crime and exploitation to flourish. Any society established on unequal principles cannot be just and fair, and throughout the book we see example after example of that; however, we also see glimmers of hope and beauty beneath opression and decay.

Paton was a deeply religious man, and his Christian beliefs greatly influenced his writing; not only in his position against Apartheid, but also in his prose itself. Cry, the Beloved Country can be described as almost biblical in tone; Paton's prose has this ethereal, gospel-like quality to it, but its reader never feels like being preached to from a pulpit. The book strives to see the good in people, even those unfairly privileged, and does not shy away from noticing wrongs done by the oppressed. Paton seeks Christianity as a positive force and possibly the only way for things to change for the better, but at the same time cannot turn a blind eye to its teachings being ignored by those who pride themselves to be the bearers of civilization founded on its values. The truth is that our Christian civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma. We believe in the brotherhood of man,, remarks one of the characters in the novel, 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.

Much has been written about the book since its initial publication, and it is astonishing - and saddening - to see how relevant it is in our time. Cry, the Beloved Country is a deeply felt, profound novel written by a deeply sensitive and empathetic man, and one that I am glad I have read.

Finished reading another amazing classic !
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.
This was a deeply moving/ eye-opener book that will stay with me for a long time.
Paton touches on almost every level of trouble in post-colonial South Africa: racism, classism, elitism, residual imperical feelings, how wealth corrupts natives, arbitrary segregation, the loss of family values , social pride and other serious matters .
the book is lyrically written ( If you're a beginner , you won't find it easy to read ) , the characters almost seem realistic and you get all sorts of feelings while reading it !
It will forever be stuck in your head even though the story is fairly simply told , the message behind it is much bigger than what you actually get to read . It makes you think outside of thebox , open your eyes on a lot of things .
I had to stop reading several times to think , i just sit there , stare to the wall and think , about people , life , god and principles .
There is so much here to learn about hope, love ,forgiveness, and perseverance .
Loved this book , highly recommend it !