Paton, Alan (Stewart)

(born Jan. 11, 1903, Pietermaritzburg, Natal, S.Af.—died April 12, 1988, near Durban) South African writer and political activist.

While principal of a reformatory housing black youths, Paton introduced controversial progressive reforms and wrote his best-known work, the novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), focusing international attention on the issue of apartheid. To offer a nonracial alternative to apartheid, he helped found the Liberal Party of South Africa in 1953 and led the organization until it was banned in 1968. His other works include the novel Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and the biographies Hofmeyr (1964) and Apartheid and the Archbishop (1973).

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