Cry, the Beloved Country Cry, the Beloved Country Cry, the Beloved Country is a novel by Alan Paton, published in 1948. American publisher Bennett Cerf remarked at that year's meeting of the American Booksellers Association that there had been "only three novels published since the first of the year that were worth reading… "Cry, The Beloved Country", "The Ides of March", and "The Naked and the Dead"." Two cinema adaptations of the book have been made, the first in 1951 and the second in 1995. The novel was also adapted as a musical called "Lost in the Stars" (1949), with a book by the
Cry, the Beloved Country American writer Maxwell Anderson and music composed by the German emigre Kurt Weill. In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg. He is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, Gertrude, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, Absalom, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned. In Johannesburg, Kumalo is warmly welcomed by Msimangu,