While "Cry, the Beloved Country" is not a true story, the author Alan Paton drew from his experiences as a principal in a reformatory school to tell the story of Absalom. He grew up and worked in South Africa and saw many young men like Absalom.
As it follows a black village priest and a white farmer who must deal with news of a murder, it is a social protest against the structures of the society that would later give rise to apartheid. It remains one of the best-known works of South African literature. Two cinema adaptations of the book have been made, the first in 1951 and the second in 1995.
Alan Stewart Paton (January 11, 1903 – April 12, 1988) was born in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal. In 1953 Paton founded the South African Liberal Party, which fought against the apartheid legislation introduced by the National Party. He remained the president of the SALP until its forced dissolution by the apartheid regime.
His novel "Cry, the Beloved Country", was published in 1948, with apartheid becoming law later on that same year. It enjoyed critical success around the world, except in South Africa, where it was banned.
Certainly no Afrikaaner I knew had ever read it when in 1968/69 I lived and worked in Lüderitz in what was then South-West Africa (today's Namibia). South-West Africa was then under the same appalling apartheid rule as South Africa, which was the main reason why I left.
Apartheid has been consigned to the sewers of history but Alan Paton's book and its movie adaptations remain as powerful as they were then.
