SOURCE: Medalie, David. 'A Corridor Shut at Both Ends': Admonition and Impasse in Van der Post's In a Province and Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.” English in Africa 25, no. 2 (October 1998): 93-110.

In the following essay, Medalie compares Laurens van der Post's In a Province and Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, two novels that attack apartheid from a liberal, white perspective.

Laurens van der Post's In a Province (1934) and Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) are both Jim-Goes-to-Jo'burg stories: the many differences between the two novels notwithstanding, the basic pattern of the unsophisticated young rural man who is corrupted by the city and becomes estranged from his cultural heritage is the same. In each case, this results in the young man's becoming a criminal. In both novels, well-meaning individuals who understand this lamentable trajectory prove unable to avert its tragic course. The unconsummated sympathy is transferred, instead, to...