Courtenay, Bryce | 1989 | The Power of One |
The Power of One was Bryce Courtenay’s first book. It was published in 1989 and I read it even before it became a bestseller. I was very happy to rediscover it today as an audio book very nicely read by Humphrey Bower.
Summary – Attention! Spoilers!
It
is the year 1939 in South Africa. Peekay is five years old and lives
on a farm with his mother and beloved Zulu nanny, Mary Mandoma. After
his mother has a nervous breakdown, he is sent away to a boarding
school. There, Peekay is bullied mercilessly by the other students
because he is English, while the other children are Afrikaans. They
nickname him Piskop, meaning “piss-head.” The ringleader of the bullies
is a particularly mean-spirited boy named Judge who has a tattoo of a
swastika on his arm. He tells Peekay that Hitler will march the English
out to sea when he comes to South Africa.
The bullying
and abuse that Peekay suffers while at school cause him to start
wetting his bed. When he returns home from school at the end of his
first year, he asks his nanny to help cure him of his bedwetting
problem. She summons a medicine man, who cures Peekay and gives him a
magic chicken. The medicine man also teaches Peekay a new way to draw on
his inner strength called “the power of one” and tells him that he can
always find the medicine man by some waterfalls and stepping stones in
a special place in his head.
Peekay takes his chicken
and newfound strength back to school with him. However, the new school
year is even worse than the previous one as Judge continues to bully
him. At the end of the year, Judge forces Peekay to eat feces and kills
his chicken. Peekay is looking forward to going back home to his
nanny, but is told to take the train to his grandfather’s home in
Barberton instead. On the train, he meets HoppieGroenwald, a boxer who
inspires him to become the world welterweight boxing champion, even
though he has never boxed in his life.
When Peekay
gets to Barberton, his mother tells him that she converted to a
born-again Christian after leaving the mental institution and that she
sent Peekay’s nanny away because she refused to convert. Peekay is
annoyed at this turn of events. In the hills behind his grandfather’s
home, he meets a German professor named Doc who collects cactuses and
gives Peekay piano lessons. When World War II begins, Doc is arrested
and sent to prison for being an unregistered alien. Peekay visits him
in the jail every day to continue his lessons.
While at
the prison, Peekay trains with the prison boxing squad. An old
prisoner named Geel Piet teaches him to box. Geel is half white and
half black, which causes others to call him “yellow.” After training
with Geel, Peekay helps the team win several boxing matches. He becomes
very close to Geel, and starts a prison letter writing service and
tobacco smuggling service to help him. This makes Peekay very popular
with the prisoners, who nickname him the Tadpole Angel. However, the
prison guards eventually begin to suspect illicit activity in the jail,
and one of them beats Geel to death in the gym when he refuses to
reveal who is responsible for bringing him the letters that he was
caught carrying.
Peekay eventually becomes the best
under-twelve boxer in his region, as well as a highly talented
classical pianist. After Doc is released from prison at the end of the
war, he and a local librarian and schoolteacher work together to tutor
Peekay in academic subjects such as literature and science. As a
result, Peekay wins a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in
Johannesburg. He joins the school boxing team with his new friend,
Morrie, as his manager and helps lead the team to victory for the first
time. He also begins training with Solly Goldman, a professional
boxing coach.
In one of his boxing matches, he faces a
black man Gideon Mandoma, whom he later discovers is the son of his
former nanny. He defeats the much more experienced Gideon in a
hard-fought match. Peekay is inspired by Gideon to start an
after-school program to teach him and other black teenagers to read and
write English. However, the local police come to shut down the school
because the black students must be home by their curfew time under the
new apartheid regime. Undaunted, the boys turn the program into a
correspondence school and continue learning through letters.
When his last year in school arrives, Peekay tries and fails to obtain a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. Concerned by the setback, Peekay decides to get a job as a miner to earn money for college. While working in the copper mines in northern Rhodesia, he befriends an old man named Rasputin, who names Peekay as a beneficiary in his life insurance policy. When Rasputin dies, Peekay receives sufficient funds to pay for Oxford. Just as he is about to leave for college, Peekay runs into Judge, his old enemy from boarding school, at a bar. Judge is in a rage and tries to kill him. However, Peekay uses his boxing skills to defeat Judge, and carves his initials and the English flag over his swastika tattoo. (Source: SuperSummary)
Rediscovering my Library 