Quick-review: Cry the Beloved Country

Standing in a century-long line between Uncle Tom and To Kill a Mockingbird, Cry the Beloved Country explores similar territory but with a distinctive voice.  Unlike Mockingbird, it does not leave a warm glow as was generated by the way Harper Lee communicates a Southern childhood in spite of the harsh reality of racism.  This is not a failure of writing, but a necessary effect of a different kind of book.  Here there are real, fallible, loveable characters (Kumalo, Msimangu, Jarvis) but the canvas upon which they are painted is vast; it is the size of a nation.  And the tragedy of that nation's peoples is too complex and great for a 'happy ending'.  Alan Paton was writing soon after WWII and the solution to South Africa's problems were still half a century away, and so there is no sweetening of the tragedy encapsulated in the novel.  But for all that, it is suffused with hope, even though its fruition is admitted to be so far off as to be unknowable.

In 1948 an ageing Zulu parson travels to Johannesburg to search for his sister and his son who, like millions of others, left the devastated countryside and crumbling tribal culture (both victims of complex factors, but predominantly exploitation by the white minority) to find a new life.  His journey of discovery reveals perhaps the most significant character in the book, South Africa itself, and the complexities of a divided nation, with a fearful minority in control, and a devastated majority looking for hope.

A truly profound and moving book, written in a style which initially takes some getting used to, but also helps to produce an immediacy of effect.