Too Late the Phalarope found in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Too Late the Phalarope Too Late the Phalarope is the second novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing "Cry, the Beloved Country". It was published in 1953, and was the last novel he published before "Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful" in 1981. The summary on the dust jacket of the first UK edition reads, in part; 'The setting is again South Africa, but the tragedy this time is of a white man who, for complicated reasons, some of them not unconnected with his childhood
Cry, the Beloved Country affected by "native crime" while blacks suffer from social instability and moral issues due to the breakdown of the tribal system. It shows many of the problems with South Africa such as the degrading of the land reserved for the natives, which is sometimes considered to be the main theme, the disintegration of the tribal community, native crime, and the flight to urban areas. Another prevalent theme in "Cry, the Beloved Country" is the detrimental effects of fear on the characters and society of South Africa as indicated in the following quotation from the narrator in Chapter 12: Paton makes