5/5
And then he is given a third chance. And a fourth. Until the matter is no longer in the principal's hands to decide, but we as readers must also decide, for Alan Paton in the subtext of this story is asking us to consider what working with those who live with a Divided House, means to our own.

4.
Until one day, the boy uses the freedoms granted to him to escape back into a life of crime and the principal, by chance, finds him in a hospital. He is given a second chance, and especially due to the fact that the boy relates how he received a calling from God, to become a priest.

3.
The speaker of the story, a principal, relates how he allows this boy a measure of freedom after he begins demonstrating talent on the sports field, leadership amongst his peers, and industriousness in his trade workshop.

2.
This moral tale presents us with a boy who has been placed by the state in a reformatory after having been caught committing a criminal offense.

1.
With this short story by Alan Paton, we have a glimpse into the author's real-world duties and responsibilities as the Principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory in South Africa.

3/3
speaks to the deeper question of abandonment, when self-interest is the order of the day.

2.
Timeless in its message, this tale of oppressor retribution going to the extremes, not on the perpetrators of a crime, but on the innocent among a whole people guilty only of having been born into an ethnic and racial category, at the same time,

1.
"Life for a Life" is an intense short story by Alan Paton in which the social dynamics of rural life, in an unjust system, lead to deadly consequences.

The elders brought into the gravity-spell of Ha'penny's small world, soon come to learn the value of a little child's hope, able to overcome the solidity of the institution in which he has, at least, found a friend.

“Ha’penny” is a truly touching short story by Alan Paton about a young and precocious former street child, now imprisoned in a reformatory, who has imagined for himself a life more compassionate than the one he has been forced to live.

Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

Cry, the Beloved Country, is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice.

An Oprah Book Club selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, was an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

“A beautiful novel…its writing is so fresh, its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling, and its understanding so compassionate that to read the book is to share intimately, even to the point of catharsis, in the grave human experience.”
—The New York Times

About The Book

“The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time.”
—The New Republic