Alan Paton

This is a new reading of Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law. Set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s, Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu pastor, and his son, Absalom. Written with keen compassion and understanding, the novel powerfully evokes the experience of a land and a people torn by racial injustice. Paton said of his book: “It is a song...

Stephen Kumalo, a black South African minister searches the unfamiliar back alleys and shanty towns of Johannesburg for his son, Absalom. But Kumalo's unwavering faith is put to the test when he finds Absalom in jail facing a capital murder charge. Courage, dignity and sacrifice fall prey to the whirlwind of racist hypocrisy and hollow justice in Absalom's trial. Absalom's reunion and reconciliation with this father, his jailhouse marriage to his...