Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alan PatonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09
ISBN: 0099766817
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random
Book Reviews of Cry, the Beloved Country
Book Review: Cry as you can feel the pain.
Summary: 5 Stars
Dating from 1948, this book is at least as powerful now as when it was written, and was on the list of banned books in the old (white ruled) regime in South Africa. It is a simple story of a poor black pastor as he journeys to Johannesburg in search first of his sister, then of his son, and then relatives of sundry others from the locality. The black pastor also finds his brother, who like many caught within the magnet of J'burg, is not recognisable as the man that departed the countryside.
Alan Paton produced a well crafted and consistently understated volume. From the storyline, lots of sub-plots are interwoven. It is not an open indictment of the apartheid ("separate development") system that was increasingly introduced in South Africa in the late 1940's and 1950's - but yet it is. Almost in a subliminal way, there is a questioning of what is going on in the beautiful country, whilst appearing to "just" tell a tale.
Three books make up the story, although it would not make sense to read one alone or to read them out of order. Paton has a strange symmetry; the first and second books begin in the same way, with almost the same words for half a page of each. I found myself turning back to the opening lines of chapter 1 as I read the first chapter of the second book.
The story left me crying more than once, and when not crying on the outside, I was usually internally. From the mid point, there is an eerie inevitability about the gentle unfolding of the story. You know what is going to happen, at least in part, but it does not stop you reading further.
The cry of the title may be the cry of the author because the land is broken, and the tribe is broken. Paton refers to the tribe, but means the tribal system, with stability and knowing one's position. At the end of the volume, after the events in the storyline, there is some small mending of land and tribe taking place. It is perhaps the beginnings of hope. You have to divorce yourself from the historical reality of the country, as to whether that hope was realised.
I read an American edition. The author's note describes the extra-ordinary help given by an American couple to meet a hard deadline with potential publishers. That in itself lifted me up, and perhaps prepared me for the uplifting pages to follow.
I wish that I had read this book previously. The story-line is fiction, but the message is truth of the most powerful kind.
Peter Morgan (morganp@supanet.com)
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