I read this 6 or 7 years ago. It's a good book and pretty interesting. It is a book for the serious reader, that's for sure. It has a very Biblical feel to it with the way that it is written. I enjoyed it to an extent but lacked a certain knowledge and feel for the South African political climate in 1948 that would have helped me grasp much of the underlying themes that I probably missed.
It is an interesting story and one that is pretty heart-wrenching. A priest from a small town in South Africa goes to Johannesburg to help his sister who had fallen into wayward paths. Once he gets her taken care of he begins to look for his son who had come to the big city and did not return. He starts to get a scent and follow his trail and finds out some pretty crazy things including... (should I say it, is it a huge spoiler? Yes it is. Do not read the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to read the spoiler). Here it is, his son has been arrested for the murder of a man while committing a burglary of his house. It is important who this murdered person is and what all comes from it. All in all, it ends up as a pretty touching tale.
The book also has this unique way of doing dialogue. Rather than using quotation marks Paton uses hyphens. So, in honor of that method I will do the same for my selected quote:
- [O]ur Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering.
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