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 frequent use of literary and linguistic devices such as microcosms, intercalary chapters and dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue to indicate the start of speech acts to portray the devastating conditions in South Africa. The novel is filled with Biblical references and allusions. The most evident are the names Paton gives to the characters. Absalom, the son of Stephen Kumalo, is named for the son of King David, who rose against his father in rebellion. Also, in the New Testament Book of Acts, Saint Stephen was a martyr who died rather than give up his beliefs. The Gospel of