 | ABOUT THE BOOK: Cry, The Beloved Country | |
| by Alan Paton | (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948) | |
| ABOUT THE BOOK: Cry, The Beloved Country | |
| by Alan Paton | (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948) | |
(from the back cover of First Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition 1995 of
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton)
THE MOST FAMOUS AND IMPORTANT NOVEL IN SOUTH AFRICA'S HISTORY IS NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM MIRAMAX FILMS STARRING JAMES EARL JONES AND RICHARD HARRIS.
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. 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.
"A beautiful novel, rich, firm and moving...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 treated."
-- The New York Times "The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time."
-- The New Republic ALAN PATON was one of South Africa's greatest writers. His other works include Too Late the Phalarope; Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful; and a collection of short stories, Tales from a Troubled Land. He died in South Africa in 1992.
(from Note on the 1948 Edition of Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton)
"The book was begun in Trondheim and finished in San Francisco. It was written in Norway, Sweden, England and the United States....I had less than a week to spend in New York before sailing to South Africa. I air-mailed the manuscript on a Tuesday, but owing to snowstorms no planes flew. The package went by train, broke open and had to be rewrapped, and finally reached an intermediate Post Office on the Sunday, three days before I was due in New York. My friends traced this package to this intermediate Post Office, and had the office opened and the package delivered, by what means I do not know. In the meantime they had friends standing by to do the typing, and they worked night and day, with the result that the first seventeen chapters arrived at the house of Scribner's on Wednesday, a few minutes before myself...."