Books: Again, the Beloved Country

TALES FROM A TROUBLED LAND (128 pp.)—Alan Paton—Scribner ($3.50).

"I should like to write books about South Africa," said Alan (Cry, the Beloved Country) Paton a dozen years ago, "which would really stab people in the conscience." That is what he has succeeded in doing from the first. A tough and fearless little man who loves his country and its people, black and white (he is the leader of the Liberal Party in South Africa), Paton does not rank as a major writer. But for his purposes, he may be something even better: a male Harriet Beecher Stowe who avoids both...