Beloved

Book Description

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

Customer Reviews:

depressing.......2007-10-10

This book was depressing-nothing light about it-the style of writing is different and visual but if you are in it for a story, it is a tough read.

An absolute must read (and read again).......2007-09-19

Here is a shockingly raw story that could only be told so completely by Toni Morrison's unique brand of lyricism. This book is more than a tutorial on the atrocities of slavery. It is a jagged look at the power of fear, intimidation, guilt, shame, and how we can be haunted mercilessly by our pasts. It is also a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness (beginning with onesself). The movie Beloved follows the story line, dialogue, and symbolism almost verbatim. It's a great visual to enhance this book that should be read again and again throughtout the years. I think the reader will be surprised by their burgeoning understanding of this powerful work.

NOT A STORY TO PASS ON . . ........2007-08-28

I read this book for the first time in 1999; I had to think about it prior to knowing how I felt about it. However, I have come to realize that this is a kind of African American Reference book, not only for understanding slavery, but for many cultural pitfalls that are indigneous to the Af-Am community. Therefore, if you don't know anything about the history of blacks as enslaved community, or if you don't wish to be provoked into thinking, don't attempt to read this or any of her earlier works. I came to the understanding that Morrison writes in a kind of double consciousness when I was reading the inane reviews of Paradise. One can't be taught to understand Morrison, nor can she be read superficially.

Ain't no sin but white people.......2007-07-23

Each whitepeople should be made to read this book until he vomits and cries. This is what whitepeople did to black people--they stole their souls, took color from their eyes. . .If this book doesn't break apart your heart and scar up your soul, you ain't human.

One of Those Never-to-be-Forgotten Works [7][31][T].......2007-07-15

Written about slavery and post-slavery travails and the impossibility to enjoy new-found freedom, the horrors experienced by the family of Baby Sugg - most particularly her daughter-in-law, Sethe, and her granddaughter, Denver - lead us to cry for each and their Beloved.

To anyone who has not read Morrison, I give one warning: her topics are very depressing. But, her writing style is not. Therefore, she manages to capture your attention in reading about horrible events and opens your mind to things which we ordinarily do not read about or learn: for instance, after majoring in American History, I learned for the first time in this book that black men would be punished by having a tack put into their mouth at which time their mouths became deformed, tongue dried to the point of needing weeks to repair, and became mentally humiliated to an unknown degree.

There is a bit of Stephen King in this book - an apparition with the single name of Beloved returns to the family. To avenge? Or, to love? Or by her love is she an avenger? In any event, this character speaks few words but influences Denver and Sethe immensely, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

One force which seems to wrestle sanely in the insanely cruel world of slavery is Paul D. After having experienced worse tortures, mental and physical, than most others, he maintains a balanced perspective. He is the ballast to Sethe's tumultuous inner conflict. Sethe, we learn, experiences a "Sophie's Choice" situation which others view with disdain, but which we learn to understand. Even though we may not agree to the same, we understand. Morrison explains to us why good people can perform bad acts. In most simplest terms, she writes their reason of being good people that do bad things is, " That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad that you couldn't like yourself anymore."

But, those who had been slaves sought to protect their young - those who would be born free or became free before their memories jelled - from having this white-man manifestation of hate for self.

Strong topic. Strong delivery. Unique writing style. Great novel. Deeply touching. Deeply depressing. Probably, one of those never-to-be-forgotten works which you will remember for years after you turned the last page.

Average customer rating:

Voice for the Voiceless - Noble (and Nobel) attempt
Okay
A Work of Art
She really is impressed with herself
Not the best portrayal of pre-Civil War America

Beloved (Plume Contemporary Fiction)
Toni Morrison
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0452264464

Amazon.com

In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved.

A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. Morrison, a Nobel laureate, has written many fine novels, including Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Paradise--but Beloved is arguably her best. To modern readers, antebellum slavery is a subject so familiar that it is almost impossible to render its horrors in a way that seems neither clichéd nor melodramatic. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted here, but they belong to characters so precisely drawn that the tragedy remains individual, terrifying to us because it is terrifying to the sufferer. And Morrison is master of the telling detail: in the bit, for example, a punishing piece of headgear used to discipline recalcitrant slaves, she manages to encapsulate all of slavery's many cruelties into one apt symbol--a device that deprives its wearer of speech. "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye." Most importantly, the language here, while often lyrical, is never overheated. Even as she recalls the cruelties visited upon her while a slave, Sethe is evocative without being overemotional: "Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen.... And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." Even the supernatural is treated as an ordinary fact of life: "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby," comments Sethe's mother-in-law.

Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. --Alix Wilber

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

As with the ghost at its center, Beloved has taken many forms--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to Oprah Winfrey's decade-in-the-making movie to this challenging audiobook read by Lynn Whitfield. Whitfield, who won an Emmy Award playing the title role in The Josephine Baker Story, has a tough assignment as she guides us back and forth in time with Sethe, an escaped slave who's still shackled by memories of her murdered child. But, as we shift between Sethe's brutal plantation days and her haunted life immediately after the Civil War, we learn one secret after another until, finally, past and present are masterfully reconciled. (Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs

Book Description

2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Lynn Whitfield

Beloved is also available Unabridged, read by the author, Toni Morrison

"An extraordinary novel." -The New York Times

Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel brings the unimaginable experience of slavery into our comprehension. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave, who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.

Profoundly affecting, this is one of Toni Morrison's greatest novels - a dazzling and spellbinding achievement.

Customer Reviews:

Voice for the Voiceless - Noble (and Nobel) attempt.......2007-05-29

Beloved HAD to be written. The African-American tragedy is told here in a way that the slaves could not have articulated themselves - but here their souls cry out. True, Toni Morrison does not quite make this a total work of Art. The devices are too obvious as she fulfills this almost impossible task she has set herself. In this book you LIVE the destruction/denigration of life - in a way I cannot remember experiencing in any other book. The characters, especially Beloved, are symbols - and yet they are very real and quite fascinating too! These are vibrant, exciting people - and Morrison gives them a voice and makes them so real!

Okay.......2007-05-18

I read this book after reading The Known World and March so I had already had a good (better, actually) dose of reading about the inhumane conditions slaves lived under. This was a ho-hum book for me. I thought it was more work that it was worth and I wanted it over with and was glad when I finished it.

I was really struck by Morrison taking you inside the damaged spirit of some of the characters. You learn how they only let themselves love others a little as all things important to them will likely be taken away. You learn the significance of a star or a leaf to someone who has no joy in their life whatsoever. You come to understand why a mother would rather take the life of her child than subject it to a life of continuous degradation and misery.

A Work of Art.......2007-04-04

Get a peek of what is to come next in this novel without knowing you're seeing the future. Morrison's artistic lyrics are outstanding.

She really is impressed with herself.......2007-01-15

The only thing worse than reading _Beloved_ (read my review of the novel) is listening to Morrison read it. She goes so s - l - o - w - l - y, and seems more impressed with her book than the reader. Quite frankly this book doesn't really demand this close of a reading.

Although trite to say, the best compliment a writer can have is having someone else make the text come to life, and this audio book is interesting only as an historical artifact.

Not the best portrayal of pre-Civil War America.......2006-11-30

Beloved is one of the most famous novels by Toni Morrison, America's only female to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Set in the America before the Civil War, the story moves from the slave South to the non-slave North. Free the North is not, as this book depicts, for slaves could be captured and returned down South. The book is conglomeration of multiple themes and storylines. First and foremost is the story of Sethe, a black woman who used to be a slave. Second, the book focuses on her baby who died at birth, who goes by the name Beloved, and the reappearance of the baby as a ghost.

Third, the book examines slavery, racism, and the politics of inclusion and seclusion. In the South, Sethe is excluded from civil society in many ways by her color and the institution of slavery, but being a slave, is an integral part of society in general. In the North, she is not a slave per say, but instead she is excluded from society in general by the ways of white people and their benign racism. The storylines of this book also explore the physical punishments and practices used to enforce slavery at the personal level. Here is where this book stands out from others like it like Uncle Tom's Cabin or Huck Finn. This book could be described as doing for black literature on slavery as what Passion of the Christ did for movies based on the Bible. it is quite graphic with big servings of the natural thrown in. But I would not use this book as a study of slavery and the racism built into it. The text is very confusing and I, the reader, spent much time trying to understand the entity of Beloved, and its use in furthering the story. In fact, I would call this book a tragedy not about slavery and racism, but a tragedy set against the backdrop of slavery and racism. Overall, a difficult book to read and though not boring, is not on my list of great American works.

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Beloved

Manufacturer: RH Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0739342274
Release Date: 2007-03-20

Book Description

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding audio transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (Cliffs Notes)

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Wonderfully deep and compelling
WONDERFUL, INSPIRING, PHENOMENAL
Bollox
I thought that the morals and themes were good and true.
Not for most teenagers.

Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (Cliffs Notes)
Richard O. Peterson , and Eva Fitzwater
Manufacturer: Cliffs Notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0764585010

Book Description

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into critical elements and ideas within classic works of literature.

CliffsNotes on Cry, the Beloved Country takes you into a compassionately told story set in the troubled and changing South Africa in the 1940s.

Focusing on a people who are caught between two worlds -- the old with its rituals and and respect and the new with its lack of values and order -- this study guide explores a novel of social protest through character analyses and critical essays. Other features that help you figure out this important work include

Profile of the author Alan Paton's life and work
Historical background of the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s
Character web and in-depth analyses of the major roles
Summaries and commentaries for each chapter within the book
Review questions and suggestions for theme topics

Classic literature or modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Download Description

Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundlycompassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his sonAbsalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s.

This concise supplement to Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country helpsstudents understand the overall structure of the work, actions andmotivations of the characters and the social and cultural perspective ofthe author.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderfully deep and compelling.......2004-08-30

I am an English teacher and a book lover to the extreme. I use cliff notes in my class to aid students with ideas and concepts in books that might otherwise be lost on them. I like the fact that the summaries are limited on this particular version, so the students are forced to read and reread to comprehend. The book itself is one of the most beautiful, well-written, symbolic books that I have ever read. I suggest using it in a unit on South Africa, apartheid/segregation, racism, Black History, or perhaps as a tool on train-of-thought writing. The book is for mature readers--average or immature students will find the book "boring" because they are unable to comprehend the depth and meaning of the novel. The Cliff Notes should help somewhat with these students--but some could never appreciate the work even with the supplement.
For those who are not teachers, and are reading for enjoyment, the cliff notes are also good just to reinforce the concepts and make your reading experience easier. However, be sure to actually read the beautiful novel itself--the harsh truths and beautiful symbols of this book are aure to enlighten.

WONDERFUL, INSPIRING, PHENOMENAL.......1999-11-16

I personnally thought this book was great! And, that's suprising cuz I had to do it for an english assignment, and yet, i even loved the book (that's rare!) I reccomend it to all!

Bollox.......1999-11-09

If anyone can show me a worse book I will be amazed. Yes I suppose it had a good message but really he could have done it in a more interesting way. Really George Orwell could do it so why can't he. Anyone feel like chucking rotten eggs at Patons door? Yes I thought so.

I thought that the morals and themes were good and true........1999-10-12

I thought that the book was very good overall. It did have drawbacks though. Some of the things I thought were not very interesting. But I thought that the court scenes and racisim scenes were very well written. I could very well imagine myself in the position of characters. The characters were good also. There is a lot in it about fear. It describes the fear and suffering the feel very well.

Not for most teenagers........1999-09-09

Seeing these other reviews, I felt I had to add my own, since none of them were really nice. The book wasn't the most thrilling for most of the gum snapping rabble that high schools are full of. But for more mature people it was interesting. Don't go by the reviews from people who tell u it sux and they type like that.

Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Casebook (Casebook in Contemporary Fiction)

Average customer rating:

Morrison's best....a dramatic tale plagued by its past

Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Casebook (Casebook in Contemporary Fiction)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195107977

Book Description

With the continued expansion of the literary canon, multicultural works of modern literary fiction and autobiography have assumed an increasing importance for students and scholars of American literature. This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray. This casebook to Morrison's classic novel presents seven essays that represent the best in contemporary criticism of the book. In addition, the book includes a poem and an abolitionist's tract published after a slave named Margaret Garner killed her child to save her from slavery--the very incident Morrison fictionalizes in Beloved.

Customer Reviews:

Morrison's best....a dramatic tale plagued by its past.......1999-03-31

Toni Morrsion's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved, deals with the self-sacrifice of motherhood, the black experience in America, and an unescapable history which will haunt the bravest at heart. First, she creates an elaborate, detailed story for the reader and secondly, she spins the literary web together by alterating between past and present. Morrison does an extraordinary job in portaying the trials and tribulations of slavery shortly after the Civil War. Also, Toni's greatest aspect and technique of Beloved, is her use of the past ruling the present, this enables the reader to know more about the character than the character may know about themself. The theme of the novel which I found most intriguing was the aura of the book itself. The gothic tale conjured some of the most deep-rooted feelings from my soul. The book is definately a masterpiece of its time and history as well. And it feels extraordinary to have a piece of history in the palms of your hands.

Average customer rating:

"That woman is crazy, [but] ain't we all?"

Beloved (Everyman's Library)
Toni Morrison
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0307264882
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present.

Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

Customer Reviews:

"That woman is crazy, [but] ain't we all?".......2007-09-15

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1988, Toni Morrison frees herself from the bonds of traditional narrative and establishes an independent style, just as her characters have freed themselves from the horrors of slavery and escaped from Kentucky to Ohio. Revealing the story of Sethe and her family as they survive the brutality of the farm, only to encounter torments even more punishing than whippings after they escape, Morrison presents scenes in a seemingly random order, each scene revealing some aspect of life for Sethe, her boys, her dead baby Beloved, and the new baby Denver, both in the past and in the present. Moving back and forth, around, and inside out through Sethe's recollections, she gradually reveals Sethe's story to the reader, its horror increasing as the reader makes the connections which turn disconnected scenes into a powerful and harrowing chronology.

As the novel opens, Sethe and Denver have lived in #124, a house in Ohio, for eighteen years, refusing to socialize and enjoying no company. When Paul D. Garner, one of the Sweet Home men and a friend of her long-missing husband, arrives on her doorstep and moves in, Sethe slowly reveals her long-buried nightmares, and the two share their stories of the events leading up to their escape. Most haunting to Sethe is the death of her young daughter Beloved, shortly after the escape from the farm, though the reader does not know for many pages the shocking manner of her death. When a ghostly figure who calls herself Beloved arrives at #124, shortly after Paul D., Morrison creates mystery and a heart-stoppingly tense atmosphere, when Beloved, too, moves in. As Beloved gradually takes over the household and seems to demand and then possess Sethe's soul, the sorrow which has burdened Sethe seems close to breaking her.

The sadism of some slave-owners, the devices used to torture, and the desperate measures some slaves took to protect themselves and their loved ones come fully alive here, the horrors growing as the reader gradually discovers the real source of Sethe's torment. By forcing the reader to make the connections, instead of spelling out details in a traditional narrative, Morrison strengthens the impact of the novel and its brutal revelations. Symbols of water, rain, snow, and ice connect the disparate scenes, and the use of shadows and the ghostly character of Beloved keep the reader on tenterhooks until the action is eventually resolved. A powerful, atmospheric, and shocking novel, Beloved is also a searing indictment of slavery and the damage it has done to the fabric of life, damage that cannot be repaired until it is fully recognized through novels such as this. Mary Whipple

Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era

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Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era
Paul Harvey
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807858145

Book Description

This sweeping portrait of religion in the South puts race and culture at the center of more than a century of spiritual and political strife. Harvey deploys cultural history in fresh and innovative ways and fills a decades-old need for a comprehensive history of religion and its relationship to the central question of race in the South for the postbellum and twentieth-century period.

Understanding Cry, the Beloved Country: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series)

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Understanding Cry, the Beloved Country: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series)
Ngwarsungu Chiwengo
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)

ASIN: 0313335087

Book Description

Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) is one of the most influential works of South African literature. Appearing at a time when the South African political system was being increasingly questioned, the novel drew worldwide attention to the horrors of apartheid, a political institution promoting segregation and discrimination. However, because historical and social issues figure prominently in the novel, it is sometimes difficult for modern students to understand. But because of the enduring plague of racism, it is all the more important for students to come to terms with the issues Paton raises. This book overviews Paton's novel and relates it to its social and political contexts. The book begins with an analysis of the novel and gives attention to adaptations and films based on it. It then overviews South African history. This is followed by a selection of primary documents related to the origin of apartheid, the history and work conditions of miners, the social and economic conditions in urban and rural areas, the challenges facing South African women, and the state of post-apartheid South Africa. While the book does much to illuminate Paton's novel, it additionally helps students use the novel to explore important social concerns still present in society.

Toni Morrison: Beloved (Columbia Critical Guides)

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Toni Morrison: Beloved (Columbia Critical Guides)

Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 023111527X

Book Description

With excerpts from interviews and reviews, an exploration of the historical documents and slave narrative traditions on which Morrison drew, and an insightful juxtaposition of psychoanalytic and postcolonial approaches to the novel, this guide places Beloved in the contexts of Morrison's oeuvre and other works of African American literature. Chapters focus on the supernatural elements of the work, as well as the author's treatment of the physical self.

Cry, the Beloved Country (Bloom's Guides)

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Cry, the Beloved Country (Bloom's Guides)
Alan Paton
Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)

ASIN: 0791075729

Book Description

Alan Patton's Cry, The Beloved Country, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Bloom's Guides collection, presents concise critical excerpts from Cry, The Beloved Country to provide a scholarly overview of the work. This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story" which details the conditions under which Cry, The Beloved Country was written. This title also includes a short biography on Alan Patton and a descriptive list of characters.

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