Tales From a Troubled Land

New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribners Sons, 1961. First Edition [has Scribners A-2.61 on the verso]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. 128 pages. Some endpaper discoloration. DJ has some wear, edge tears and soiling. Chapters cover Life for a Life; Sponono; Ha'Penny; The Waste Land; The Worst Thing of His Life; The Elephant Shooter; Debbie Go Home; Death of a Tsotsi; The Divided House; and A Drink in the Passage. Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 - 12 April 1988) was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope. Cry, The Beloved Country has been filmed twice (in 1951 and 1995) and was the basis for the Broadway musical Lost in the Stars (adaptation by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill). Paton's second and third novels, Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful (1981), and his short stories, Tales From a Troubled Land (1961), all deal with the same racial themes that concerned the author in his first novel. In this book, Alan Paton shows unmistakably that he is not only one of the truly dedicated humanists of our day, but is at the same time one of the most disciplined of present day English prose writers. The tales in this book demonstrate the deep compassion and insight with which Mr. Paton views the troubles which beset his beloved country, South Africa. Derived from a Kirkus review: This collection of short stories of life in the Republic of South Africa cuts more to the quick than a thousand exegeses on the tensions and strife in the Dark Continent. Truth may be stranger than fiction, yet fiction certainly enlarges it and makes truth more recognizable and realizable. What Paton sees in these short stories is essentially the age old conflict of man against man, brother against brother, and against sister and father. This is the posture of Africa today and this is the set for the artist's design. Paton weaves the fabric of human valor and love and failure within this background of white against black. Each story is complete in itself and poignant characters with a story of their own as well as Dark Africa emerge. Yet this is not a sociologist's book. Those who prize the short story will certainly be touched by Paton's dark and white man moving in a world in which each carries the burden of the other on his heart.