If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
Interpretation
A novel set in South Africa must address the country's critical issues to be considered valuable.
Alan Paton emphasizes that literature should engage with the significant social, political, and cultural issues of its time and place. In South Africa, particularly during the years of apartheid, a novel that ignores the prevailing struggles and injustices would lack relevance and significance, highlighting the responsibility of writers to reflect the realities of their society.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing the significance of social issues in literature.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964
I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.
Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov's description, in 'Speak, Memory,' of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning.
People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.
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