SOURCE: "Moderate to a Fault?," in The New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1988, p. 36.

In the review below, Minter outlines the major events of Paton's life covered in Journey Continued.

For four decades, Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country has given millions their first glimpses of the human tragedy of South African racism. Its simple eloquence leaves few unmoved. Appropriately, it forms the hinge between the two volumes of Paton's autobiography.

Towards the Mountain, which was published in 1980, recounted Paton's conversion from the white racist paternalism he had accepted until his mid-30's. Between 1941 and 1943 he sat on an Anglican commission on South African society that consisted of 31 whites and two blacks. From his fellow commissioners and others associated with the liberal Institute of Race Relations, Paton gained a vision. "I was no longer a white person but a member of the human race."

On leave from...