Save the Beloved Country [Hardcover]

Paton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 1989

A distinguished collection of short pieces and essays written by Alan Paton that testify to the mounting and explosive violence that has rocked the modern history of South Africa.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In these 90 short newspaper pieces (and one poem) reprinted from the last two decades, the noted South African novelist ( Cry, the Beloved Country ), who died last year at the age of 85, comments on apartheid, its causes and effects, proponents and opponents. Presenting impressions of prime ministers Smuts, Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha, black African leaders Luthuli, Sobukwe, Tutu and Mandela, Paton criticizes Afrikaner nationalism, the "unreliable English" and "the stupid kind of activism that demands everything NOW." He asks questions "that lie heavily on one's mind and soul, day after day, year after year": Is disinvestment effective? How can we prevent terror? Is South Africa worth fighting for? While keenly observed and well argued, many of these pieces are of historic rather than immediate interest.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Paton, author of the now classic Cry the Beloved Country , remained to the end of his life (he died in 1988) a respected, even beloved, writer, a major literary figure in South Africa, despite the fact that events in his country had already passed him by. His arguments against disinvestment in South Africa alienated him from those in the forefront of the struggle. Poignant, eloquent, true to his spiritual vision, yet rendered increasingly anachronistic in the "post-Soweto" world of South Africa, Paton continued to write uncompromisingly. These collected journalistic pieces of the last 25 years are inevitably political. Paton writes of prominent South Africans--Luthuli, Mandela, Tutu, Smuts, Botha, Buthelezi--of Soweto, Sharpeville, and Crossroads, of detentions and bannings, of Afrikaners and apartheid, of hopes and fears; they are a cri de coeur for South Africa. To read them assumes a familiarity with the South African situation. And, in the end, we've heard it all before. Recommended for libraries specializing in South Africana.
- Janet L. Stanley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Edition, 1st Printing edition (November 6, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068419127X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684191270
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,234,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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