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Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club) | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Paton
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $0.96
You Save: $13.04 (93%)
New (9) Used (36) Collectible (1) from $0.96
Avg. Customer Rating:  249 reviews
Sales Rank: 122793
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ASIN: B0007YJ3VQ
Publication Date: August 31, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Earlier edition mass market paperback/Different cover and publisher - Clean with light shelfwear, In stock and available for immediate shipping.
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| Also Available In:
| • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry the Beloved Country (Twentieth Century Classics) (Spanish Edition) | | • | Paperback - CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY: A STORY OF COMFORT IN DESOLATION. | | • | School & Library Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country (New Longman Literature) | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation (Longman Fiction) | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country (Bridge) | | • | Turtleback - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Turtleback - Cry, The Beloved Country (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections) | | • | Hardcover - CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY (Cry the Beloved Country Hre) | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country (Scribner Classics) (Scribner Classics) | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country (Scribner Library Reprint Series) | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - Cry the Beloved Country | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, The Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Readings on Cry, the Beloved Country (Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to World Literature) | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club) | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections) | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, The Beloved Country | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country/Cassette/Cdl5 1605 | | • | Library Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation | | • | Audio CD - Cry the Beloved Country | | • | Audio CD - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | MP3 CD - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Library Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country (Landmark books) | | • | Paperback - Spark Notes Cry, The Beloved Country | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, The Beloved Country | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, The Beloved Country | | • | Audio Download - Cry, the Beloved Country (Unabridged) | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, the beloved country | | • | Unknown Binding - Cry, the beloved country | | • | Kindle Edition - Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club) | | • | Paperback - CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY (Scribner Classic) | | • | Audio Download - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation | | • | Paperback - CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY | | • | Paperback - Cry the Beloved Country | | • | School & Library Binding - Cry, The Beloved Country (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections) | | • | Paperback - Cry, The Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club, Number 48) | | • | Hardcover - Cry the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Alan Paton | | • | Paperback - Literary Companion Series - Cry, the Beloved Country (paperback edition) | | • | Library Binding - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Hardcover - Cry, the Beloved Country (Bloom's Guides) | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton Reads) | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Audio Cassette - Cry, the Beloved Country | | • | Paperback - Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation |
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Product Description
"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 contemporaneity, 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 244 more reviews...
 Exceedingly Beautiful January 1, 2009
Had to read it for AP English high school, very glad I did. Extraordinarily well-written book set in apartheid South Africa.
Historical perspective on how South Africa got to be the way it is December 6, 2008
Very logically, it was a trip to South Africa that reminded me of this important book, and I'm very glad I have finally read it. It was probably the right time to read it too, since instead of it striking me as quaint and exotic, it was full of things that were already a little familiar to me, like place and language names.
The characters and plot are all highly symbolic, chosen for their representative value in telling the story of South Africa as Paton knew it, rather than being realistic references to specific people and events. White colonizers first systematically deconstructed the existing tribal system, then with the steady growth of "native" crime, they tried to patch things up. But the damage had been done, and rampant crime is still probably the one near-fatal flaw of modern South Africa. Otherwise it is a vibrant, exciting coming together of fascinating diverse cultures.
One thing that stood out was the sympathetic portrayal of whites who reached out to blacks and tried to redress some of the wrongs imposed by their society. The author himself was one of these, and certainly was using the medium of fiction to tell part of his own story. He succeeds at the same time at winning the readers' understanding of and sympathy for the plight of poor and unsophisticated but basically good and all-too-human blacks caught in the maelstrom of the times they lived in.
The language of the book may sound a bit stilted if you're expecting modern, fast-moving colloquial English. The writing is however in fact quite remarkable in how its echoes the syllable-timed tonal languages of black South Africa, and for me it was overall a pleasing effect.
Highly recommended - this a basic work not to be missed by any aspiring world citizen.
Cry the Beloved Country October 4, 2008
This is an excellent book. We are travelling to South Africa next year and this book gives an excellent view of the times.
Heart wrenching, sad, uplifting, moving, inspiring ...... July 30, 2008
I can't believe I'd never heard of this book before I received the list of books my church ladies book group was going to cover this year. I could not put this book down. It is the story of two elderly South African men, one black and one white, who had never met until the lives of their only sons tragically intersect. The two men find, not only that their sons were not the sons of their youth but vastly different, indeed their fathers truly had no idea what kind of men they had become.
As they try to come to know and understand the men their sons had become, two fathers learn and grow, themselves becoming new men in the process.
I highly recommend this book - I only wish I'd known about it sooner!
Oh, and I'm so glad that I did not know it was an Oprah's book club pick because, sad but true, that would have turned me off of it before I even opened the cover!
It's on my Top 10 July 23, 2008
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
How much can a man love his country? How much can he love his son? His God? Can justice prevail when man cannot? What is forgiveness? Redemption? Grace? To consider all these elements in one novel is not possible. Or is it?
"Cry, the Beloved Country" is all these things and more. It is forgiveness writ large. It is agape love in the doing. It is the story of two fathers, each with a son. One son is the victim of apartheid and is lost. The other is also a victim of apartheid but of the other side. He seeks to find a way to make things better, to make things right. The lost one kills the seeking one. One is African, the other is Afrikaaner, and therein lies the difference and the ultimate. This difference, this ultimate, this absolute are what drove Alan Paton in the writing of South Africa's most famous, most searing novel of the separation of races in all ways.
Absalom Kumalo's life is limited in all ways because he is black South African. Arthur Jarvis is an engineer and has all the privileges of white South Africa, yet he is keen on social justice and works to bring it to pass. What irony then that the one without kills the one seeking to bring justice. However, it is this very irony that brings their fathers to friendship, to a bonding of black man and white man.
Umfundisi is the black priest (not Catholic) of a simple, poor church in a village located near the home of the rich landowner and farmer, James Jarvis, who really does not know his son until he is dead. It is the getting to know his son that he connects with the African, and the father becomes the son in the ways of love and forgiveness. The umfundisi is one of my favorite characters in all literature I have read because of his humility and reverence.
This novel, published in 1948, remains as one, even today, apropos to race relations, to their very real potentials and actualities. Mutual respect, sincerity, forgiveness, and grace all come to the fore in this most magnificent, lyrical novel.
It would be on my Top 10 list of books I would take if marooned on the proverbial deserted island.
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