Cry, the Beloved Country

The Beloved Country, Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law, is a work of searing beauty. An Oprah Book Club selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, was an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948. Alan Paton’s 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 is a work of searing beauty.