The Lying Days Lying Days" in 1953 were generally positive. "New York Times" critic James Stern compared the novel favourably to the works of Alan Paton, especially "Cry, the Beloved Country", describing "The Lying Days" as the better of the two novels. Stern described the novel as less "novel" and more "biography", following the style and form of biographical writing. In a review in the "Fitchburg Sentinel", W. G. Rogers wrote that in "The Lying Days" Gordimer shows that South Africa "is a land not of a single problem, race, but of many problems which that one central issue seems to magnify and
Cry, the Beloved Country affected by "native crime" while blacks suffer from social instability and moral issues due to the breakdown of the tribal system. It shows many of the problems with South Africa such as the degrading of the land reserved for the natives, which is sometimes considered to be the main theme, the disintegration of the tribal community, native crime, and the flight to urban areas. Another prevalent theme in "Cry, the Beloved Country" is the detrimental effects of fear on the characters and society of South Africa as indicated in the following quotation from the narrator in Chapter 12: Paton makes