["Tales from a Troubled Land"] is a collection of ten tales, one superb, one first-rate, the remainder of lesser quality. To begin with the best, "Life for a Life" ranks with the most moving writing the author has ever done. It tells of the events that follow the murder of a rich Afrikaner farmer, as seen from the viewpoint of his colored laborers…. The writing is dark with the menace of approaching retribution. Once more the meekness of the colored folk is contrasted with the oafish brutality of the Afrikaner police…. The prose is Biblical in its power, and the whole terrifying episode is set down with a quiet ferocity which wells up not from the words, but in the heart of the reader. This is a story that shows Paton at his unapproachable best.

Hardly less poignant is the brief vignette he calls "Ha'penny." …

For many years before he became a writer, Paton served as head of a renowned reform school for colored boys. Most of the stories in this book are drawn from that experience. They vary in quality: some point up the peculiarities in African ratiocination, others are mere anecdotes which puzzle or amuse. The best of this group is "Sponono," about a Xosa boy who always meant well but invariably acted ill. If this story proves anything at all, it is only that the two races will probably never understand each other's thinking fully.

This reminiscent side of Paton is not one to bring out the best in him. Only when grappling with the massive themes which touch his conscience does the writer in him become most eloquent. It is this which stirs him in "A Life for a Life," and there are flashes of it, too, in the closing story, "A Drink in the Passage."