Alan. Cry the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation.

by PATON

£2,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

‘For Who Can Stop the Heart from Breaking?’ PATON, Alan. Cry the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation. London: Jonathan Cape . 1948. 8vo. Publisher’s oatmeal cloth lettered in red to front board and spine, illustrated dust-jacket with the printed price of 9s. 6d to front flap, tail-edge untrimmed; pp. 296, [3 (blank)]; slight wear to extremities of jacket with short closed tear to rear fold (c. 15 mm) and to foot of spine (c. 25 mm), spine lightly sunned with a few small marks and slight fraying at head, minute burnhole to front flap touching a single character (also visible to front pastedown and free endpaper), two small pieces of cellotape to reverse of jacket, pushing to spine ends, top-edge slightly dusty; a very good copy in like jacket; contemporary ‘Shuter and Shooter’ of Pietermaritzburg bookseller’s label to pastedown ( see below ). First UK edition, first impression of Alan Paton’s landmark novel, published in the same year apartheid became an official policy in South Africa. This copy has been signed and dated by the author, most likely in his hometown of Pietermaritzburg. The UK edition was narrowly preceded by the US edition (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons). Cry, the Beloved Country follows Reverend Stephen Kumalo who leaves rural Natal for Johannesburg in search of his sister and his son, Absalom. There, he discovers that Absalom has murdered the white farmer and advocate for racial equality Arthur Jarvis in a robbery gone wrong. Through this tr

• Printing: first
• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.