Cry, The Beloved Country
First US edition
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| Author | Alan Paton |
|---|---|
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scribners (USA) & Jonathan Cape (UK) |
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Publication date
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December 1948 |
| Media type | Print (hard~ & paperback) |
| Pages |
256 pp (hardback ed., UK) 273 pp (hardback ed., US) |
| ISBN | (hardback edition, UK) |
| OCLC | 13487773 |
256 pp (hardback ed., UK)
Cry, the Beloved Country is a novel by Alan Paton, published in 1948. American publisher Bennett Cerf remarked at that year's meeting of the American Booksellers Association that there had been "only three novels published since the first of the year that were worth reading… Cry, The Beloved Country, The Ides of March, and The Naked and the Dead."
Two cinema adaptations of the book have been made, the first in 1951 and the second in 1995. The novel was also adapted as a musical called Lost in the Stars (1949), with a book by the American writer Maxwell Anderson and music composed by the German emigre Kurt Weill.
In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg. He is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, Gertrude, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, Absalom, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned. In Johannesburg, Kumalo is warmly welcomed by Msimangu, the priest who sent him the letter, and given comfortable lodging by Mrs. Lithebe, a Christian woman who feels that helping others is her duty.
Kumalo visits Gertrude, who is now a prostitute and liquor seller, and persuades her to come back to Ndotsheni with her young son.
A more difficult quest follows, when Kumalo and Msimangu begin searching the labyrinthine metropolis of Johannesburg for Absalom. They visit Kumalo's brother, John, who has become a successful businessman and politician, and he directs them to the factory where his son and Absalom once worked together.
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