Cry the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton | Grades: 9 -12
Cry, the Beloved Country, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Paton's deeply moving story of Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the backdrop of a land and people riven by racial inequality and injustice, remains the most famous and important novel in South Africa's history.
Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. 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.