The emotional impact of Cry, the Beloved Country is achieved, first of all and most consistently, by Paton's stylistic understatement, by his use and reuse of a few simple, almost stilted, formal phrases. Is it heavy? Jarvis asks Stephen Kumalo when the latter haltingly and painfully reveals his identity as the father of the murderer of Jarvis' son. Kumalo's reply echoes and reechoes the adjective: It is very heavy, umnumzana. It is the heaviest thing of all my years … This thing that is the heaviest thing of all my years, is the heaviest thing of all your years also…. Similarly Mrs. Lithebe, whenever she is praised for her great generosity, repeatedly responds with a question that becomes something of a litany: Why else were we born?

In their stark simplicity, these and other phrases often suggest the biblical. Like the scripture readings … and the errant son's name (Absalom...