Cry, the Beloved Country

“The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time.” —The New Republic

“A beautiful novel…its writing is so fresh, its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling, and its understanding so compassionate that to read the book is to share intimately, even to the point of catharsis, in the grave human experience.” —The New York Times

Among the most famous and important novels in South Africa's history and an immediate international bestseller, Alan Paton's impassioned story about a Black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty.

A worldwide bestseller when first published in 1948 and an Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2003, Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a Black man’s country under white man’s law is a classic of South African literature and an enduring work of searing beauty.

Cry, the Beloved Country follows the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, who commits a terrible crime that unexpectedly brings together two fathers—one Black, one white—in a land and a people riven by racial injustice.

Set in pre-apartheid South Africa, the novel explores the racial prejudice and social conditions that created it, offering a stark reminder of a painful past; yet, in the words of Nelson Mandela, the story also serves as “a monument to the future.”

Alan Paton, a native son of South Africa, was born in Pietermaritzburg, in the province of Natal, in 1903. Paton's initial career was spent teaching in schools for the sons of rich, white South Africans, But at thirty, he suffered a severe attack of enteric fever, and in the time he had to reflect upon his life, he decided that he did not want to spend his life teaching the sons of the rich. He got a job as principal of Diepkloof Reformatory, a huge prison school for delinquent black boys, on the edge of Johannesburg. He worked at Diepkloof for ten years, and at the end of it Paton felt so strongly that he needed a change, that he sold his life insurance policies to finance a prison-study trip that took him to Scandinavia, England, and the United States. It was during this time that he unexpectedly wrote his first published novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. It stands as the single most important novel in South African literature. Alan Paton died in 1988 in South Africa.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of the critically acclaimed novels ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, Book of the Little Axe, and her latest, Casualties of Truth, inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty hearings.