Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The compelling and sad tale of South Africa, 3 Feb 2006
Reverend Stephen Kumalo lives with his wife in a remote village, Ndotsheni, where he is a respected umfundisi. His sister Gertrude, his brother John and his son Absalom have all gone to live to Johannesburg. One day The reverend receives a letter from Theophilus Msimangu urging him to come to Johannesburg because Gertrude is very sick.
And so begins Stephen's long descent from the mountains to the capital which almost resembles a descent into Hell. Indeed, he is to discover that Gertrude is a prostitute and liquor seller who doesn't care about her young daughter, that John is a politician fighting against the white leadership and that Absalom has murdered a white man.
Mr Paton admirably portrays all the contradictions which the people of South Africa endured in the 1950s. And he does so through the eyes of a forlorn old man who tries to make sense of the way the members of his family behave. The author's humanity, compassion, generosity and wisdom are apparent in every sentence he writes and his novel shows with sensitivity the complex social and racial issues in a country where so many had to suffer for so long.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gripping story, 3 Feb 2005
It is a blessing for a booklover to come across a story which is so deep like Cry the beloved country. The characters are dissected and made so real. The plot is awesome and the pace of the story is fast moving. Plotted in the depth of Apartheid South Africa, this story brought out the lamentation of a soul of a nation, a lamentation that is felt by all the different ethnic and racial groups involved. I watched the movie on the story "Amok" and it gave the full visual presentation of the story. I will recommend this book to all booklovers with a curious mind about an era, a people and a nation that stared at disaster straight in the eyes and chose the option of peace.Also recommended:The usurper and other stories, Disciples of Fortune,Animal farm
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A simply wonderful book, 24 Jul 2003
Stephen Kumalo, an old, poor Zulu priest from the drought-stricken, dying village of Ndotsheni in the Natal, must use his meager life savings to travel to 1940s Johannesburg, to seek out his sister and son, who left long ago. “When people go to Johannesburg, they do not come back”. There he encounters the squalor, poverty and crime of the big city, and there he meets Msimangu, a fellow priest who offers him help and comfort on what becomes a terrible journey of discovery. For he finds that his sister has become a prostitute, and his son one of a gang of housebreakers who ultimately shoots and kills a prominent white liberal, and must hang for his crime. By coincidence, the dead man is the son of Kumalo’s white neighbour, Jarvis, who owns a farm in the hills above Ndotsheni.
Such are the bare bones of Alan Paton’s “story of comfort in desolation”, around which he has created what I would rate as one of the greatest of twentieth century novels. This is a book of extraordinary power and beauty, and has lost none of its impact now that the apartheid South Africa it describes is finally gone. The situation of privileged whites living off the exploitation of cheap black (or Asian or South American or East European) labour, of affluence existing side-by-side with dire poverty, is hardly unique to a particular time or place. Paton’s writing is direct yet also poetic, and for all the apparent simplicity of style this is not an easy book to read for anyone of sensitive disposition, particularly a parent of young children. His prose cuts through the trivial preoccupations of life to reveal the essential and timeless, in a way that strikes at the heart and which I still find genuinely moving after countless re-readings. Some may be put off by the strong religious content of this book, but might be surprised to know that evolutionist Richard Dawkins, one of Britain’s more aggressive atheists, has ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ in his list of top ten books of the 20th century. Some may criticise the reaction of Jarvis to the death of his son as unlikely or unbelievable. But I wholeheartedly recommend this novel as that rare thing, a truly profound work of art. It reduces most other modern novels to the level of inconsequential fluff.
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