Cry, the Beloved Country - Outside of a Dog

Hardcover, 320 pages

English language

Published Dec. 2, 2003 by Scribner.

ISBN:: 978-0-7432-6195-1
OCLC Number:: 53895535

This book is the most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948.

Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, " We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony."

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. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of …

This book is the most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948.

Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, " We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony."

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. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man. - Jacket flap.

41 editions

el dang reviewed Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Review of 'Cry, the Beloved Country' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

A beautiful, deeply sad book that tells the story of South Africa before Apartheid had a name, but when most of that system was functionally in place, through a few peoples' connected stories.[return][return]The writing is a powerful example of how to love a place while despising crucial things about it.[return][return]The book does have some weaknesses which I think reflect the author's position of privilege relative to half of the characters. White saviourism creeps in a little in book 3; there aren't really any fully realised female characters; and I think he lets off Anglo South Africa too easily by caricaturing Afrikaners as the sole drivers of Apartheid. It's a mark of Paton's skill as a writer that all of these elements are much less of a drag than in other books like this I've read (notably Snow Falling on Cedars, which is all-but-ruined by the equivalent flaws). It may be …

A beautiful, deeply sad book that tells the story of South Africa before Apartheid had a name, but when most of that system was functionally in place, through a few peoples' connected stories.[return][return]The writing is a powerful example of how to love a place while despising crucial things about it.[return][return]The book does have some weaknesses which I think reflect the author's position of privilege relative to half of the characters. White saviourism creeps in a little in book 3; there aren't really any fully realised female characters; and I think he lets off Anglo South Africa too easily by caricaturing Afrikaners as the sole drivers of Apartheid. It's a mark of Paton's skill as a writer that all of these elements are much less of a drag than in other books like this I've read (notably Snow Falling on Cedars, which is all-but-ruined by the equivalent flaws). It may be the best account a white South African could have written of that moment in time, and now I really want to read a black South African's counterpart.

Subjects

Literary
Fiction - General
Fiction
Fiction / General
General