Alan Paton's short fiction : authority and other quandaries in the hero of Currie Road

Abstract

Alan Paton is known chiefly for his novels, biographies, autobiographies and political writings. His short stories have received relatively little attention. At their best, however, they are finely wrought and deeply absorbing. What is more, they encapsulate many of the complexities of his work. The collection entitled The Hero of Currie Road (published in 2008), in which Umuzi have gathered together what they call the "complete short pieces" (indicating that several of the prose items are not short stories as such) reveals once more how difficult it is to categorise Paton's writing or to make generalisations about it. Here, as elsewhere, Paton is subtle and heavyhanded, perspicacious and encumbered by blind spots, outmoded and astonishingly, stubbornly relevant.