In a cathedral in Norway in 1946, Alan Paton sat looking at a rose window. "There was still enough light in the sky to see its magnificent design and colors," wrote Paton in Towards the Mountain, his autobiography. "I was in the grip of powerful emotion, not directly to do with the cathedral and the rose window, but certainly occasioned by them. I was filled with an intense homesickness, for home and wife and sons, and for my far off country." Paton went back to his hotel and wrote the following sentences: "There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it." Paton kept writing, and the sentences stretched out into what would become a classic South African novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. According to William Minter, writing in New York Times...