5/27/2023 0 Comments Cry the beloved country book cover![]() ![]() ![]() Like Stephen’s sister Gertrude Kumalo, Absalom went to the city for work and lost contact with his family. The plot revolves around the spiritual journey of the pastor Stephen Kumalo whose son Absalom Kumalo has been corrupted by life in Johannesburg. Reading it today when South Africa is a multiracial democracy, I notice different aspects of the novel. ![]() I read Cry, the Beloved Country through the prism of these events and felt that everything was hopeless. If anything, the situation in South Africa in the 1970s was even worse than when the book was first published in 1948 because there had been the Sharpeville massacre, Nelson Mandela was behind bars on Robben Island and the activist Ruth First had been killed by the South African security forces. I first read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country decades ago, when apartheid was still firmly entrenched and the idea of multiracial democracy seemed like an impossible dream. Listening to an audio book is a good way to revisit a book read a long time ago. ![]()
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