Cry, The Beloved Country

"A beautiful novel, rich, firm and moving... its writing is so fresh, its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling and its understanding so compassionate, that to read the book is to share intimately, even to the point of catharsis, in the grave human experience it treats." - New York Times

I bought this book on 4th September 2005, and it has, for some reason or the other, stayed unread until now. I know that I promised to write a review once I finished reading the book, but for many reasons, I now find that thought mildly presumptuous. This is not a book I am equipped, either intellectually or emotionally, to review. In some measure, I can write about it, try and pay some tribute to what this book has meant to me, for even though no comparisons can be made, Cry, The Beloved Country was as cathartic an experience as Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Cry, The Beloved Country is a spiritual book, in that it believes in faith as therapeutic, in that it believes in forgiveness as cleansing and in that it believes in love as the only way to redemption. It strips words like 'brotherhood' and 'compassion' of their years of bloody hypocrisy, so that you see them for the beautiful words they once were, and the wonderful ideas that they stood for. It is unafraid to speak, to apportion blame, to give credit where it is due, to look at tragedy full in the face without flinching, yet without losing hope.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Without losing hope. The loss of hope is worse even than the loss of faith. But to hope without knowing how or where or when that hope may be realised; to hope wihout reservation, with the certainty of the dawn, the sunrise, the tides; to hope that the limits of human reason and understanding, hide a secret that will ultimately emancipate; that is the secret goodness of this book, the key to its effectiveness, the reason for its relevance in a world where the human life itself has become irrelevant.

Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Angeli and East Griqualand.The great valley of the Umzimkulu is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotshemi is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.