Alan Paton was one of South Africa's best-known novelists, as well as a reputable poet, biographer, politician, prison reformer, and thinker. Following the publication of his first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, in 1948, Paton quickly became South Africa's most widely read novelist, a position he continued to enjoy to the end of his long life. He subsequently published two other novels, Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful (1981); a volume of short stories, Tales from a Troubled Land, published as Debbie Go Home in Britain (1961); a meditative memoir of his first marriage, Kontakion for You Departed (1969); two acclaimed volumes of autobiography, Towards the Mountain (1980) and Journey Continued (1988); two major biographies; a devotional work, Instrument of Thy Peace: Meditations Prompted by the Prayer of St. Francis (1968); several factual studies of South Africa; and many hundreds of articles of political comment and protest. In addition, he...