The great red hills stand desolate...

I wrote a week or so ago about books, and ones that 'mean a lot to me'. I mentioned Cry, The Beloved Country because it is still one of the most beautiful and haunting and sad and uplifting and wonderful books I have ever read.

Anyway, I regularly read Sam's livejournal, and this morning he posted the first few paragraphs from the book, and reading them made me fall in love with that book all over again. How can you not love a book that contains imagery like this:

The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth. Down in the valleys women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are valleys of old man and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them any more.

Gah.

In other news, I just successfully convinced my tutor to up my credit to a distinction on my essay! Waahoo for me!