There are good reasons there are over 5,000 reviews of Cry, The Beloved Country on Goodreads and over 3,000 on Amazon. Nelson Mandela called it “A monument to the future.” The book is about apartheid South Africa in the 1940s. On another level, it is about a devout Christian priest, Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu living in a rural village, who teaches his people about forgiveness and the answer to prayers to a faithful God.
It is also a social protest against an unjust system created by white Europeans to dominate the people and natural resources of a beloved country. As a former prosecutor, I was captivated by the judicial process in South Africa that convicted Stephen’s son, Absalom, for the murder of a white man in Johannesburg. A deeper connection to the Bible is found in the names of characters and how their lives repeat scriptural themes. The murder victim, Arthur Jarvis, is a white man trying to free the captive black people. His son (unnamed) is described as a light to his nation, much like his father, which may be a reference to Christ. Absalom in the Old Testament is the son of King David, who rebelled against his father, and it cost him his life. The author Alan Paton made many more Biblical allusions in this powerful work, which has been adapted into two films.