Cry, the Beloved Country
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.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
17mentions
12people
2013–2025years
29% recommend71% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For me it's either "Cry, the Beloved Country" or "Slaughterhouse-Five".
EDIT: Oh wait, or maybe it's "The End of the Affair", or "Je l'aimais".
- > What is this “aesthetic” where you don’t capitalize sentences but still follow every other grammar rule?
People with little talent and unimportant messages want to write like Alan Paton[1].
The point they miss is that it worked for Alan Paton because he had a lot of talent and very important messages.
I've seen talentless hacks do something similar, copying the narrative quality of Doctor Manhatten from the Watchmen novel, not realising that it worked for him because he was a being who lived outside of time, but it just makes them look stupid.
[1] "Cry, The Beloved Country", which is one of the more powerful books I've read in my life thus far, next to 1984 and similar. People who virtue signal (you know who you are) should read this; the struggle was real, human grief knows no race boundaries.
- I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.
- Cry The Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Whenever I feel short of compassion, this books helps me gain some senses and completely change the way I look at the world - literally everytime.
- If you want to learn more about what South Africa was like for people of different races before Apartheid, and the steps that lead to Apartheid, you should read the excellent book 'Cry the Beloved Country.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry,_the_Beloved_Country, http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Beloved-Country-Alan-Paton/dp/0743...)
The history of South Africa is unique, and you will learn something. These events are strongly connected to the discovery of gold and diamonds. Perhaps you've heard of the Rhodes scholarship? Cecil John Rhodes was a key player in these trades, and the Rhodes scholarship has a special status in SA.
Examples of previously white only areas : http://goo.gl/maps/JMQ07, http://goo.gl/maps/rz0bf
Examples of black only areas: http://tinyurl.com/pxpbwtq, http://tinyurl.com/kvxzm4l
- > It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket.
Maybe things have really changed a lot since I was in school, but that was certainly not the type of questions that were asked of set works.
The questions were asked such that, the more the student got into the book, the higher the mark they were able to get.
Easy questions (everyone gets this correct if they read the book): Did his friends and family consider $protagonist to be miserly or generous.
Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as.
Very hard questions (for those who got +90% on their English grades): In the story arc for $A it can be claimed that the author intended to mirror the arc for Cordelia from King Lear. Make an argument for or against this claim.
That last one is the real deal; answerable only by students who like to read and have read a lot - it involves having read similar characters from similar stories, then knowing about the role of Cordelia, and at least a basic analysis of her character/integrity, maybe having read more works by this same author (they'll know if the mirroring is accidental or intentional), etc.
We were never asked "what color shirt did $A wear to the outing" types of questions (unless, of course, that was integral to the plot - $A was a double-agent, and a red shirt meant one thing to his handler while a blue shirt meant something else).
Did I like the set works? Mostly not, but I had enough fiction under my belt in my final two years of high-school that I could sail through the very difficult questions, pulling in analogies and character arcs, tone, etc from a multitude of Shakespeare plays, social issue fictional books ("Cry, The Beloved Country", "To Kill a Man's Pride", "To Kill a Mockingbird", etc), thrillers (Frederick Forsythe, et al), SciFi (Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick), Horror-ish (Stephen Kind, Dean R Koontz) and more.
With my teenager now, second-final year of high-school, I keep repeating the mantra of "To get high English marks, you need to demonstrate critical thinking, not usage of fancy words", but alas, he never reads anything that can be considered a book, so his marks never get anywhere near the 90% grade that I regularly averaged :-(
The only books he's ever read are those he's been forced to read in school.
