The Power of One Bryce Courtnay The title of this even today still remains as one of the bestselling novels at Australia by any author. However, be in the know that the author himself
Bryce Courtnay is a proudly south African native who emigrated UK for studying and eventually lived permanently at Australia thereafter. Here on this riveting, spellbound and compiling tale you will be deeply taken through the journey of a young Anglo-African boy who, through the course of the story, acquires the nickname of Peekay. (In the movie version, the protagonist's given name is Peter Phillip Kenneth Keith, but not in the book. The author identifies "Peekay" as a reference to his earlier nickname "Pisskop": Afrikaans for "Pisshead.") When his mother suffers from a nervous breakdown, five-year-old Peekay is sent to a tiny rural Afrikaans boarding school. He is severely bullied and teased for being English (anti-English sentiment was widespread amongst Afrikaners following their defeat in the
Boer War).
Peekay is especially bullied by "the Judge", a cruel, avid Nazi supporter and the oldest student. The effects of maltreatment is creeping on him adversely, and to worsen his situation he gets told that he wouldn’t return to his grandfathers farm due to the ravaging endemic called Newcastle disease. Through stroke of luck he got the opportunity to meet a stranger on the train who happened to be a godsend known as Hoppie Groenewald, a guard. Groenewald shares his love of boxing with Peekay. After seeing him win a boxing match, Peekay is mesmerized with the sport and vows to become the welterweight champion of the world. However, the next day Hoppie departs to fight in a war, and Hoppie's friend Hetty dies on the train Peekay is travelling on. When Peekay arrives in Barberton, he realises both his academic and physical potential. He excels in his grades and fights the children of the school. He becomes a frequent winner, never having lost a match. A new lease in life began for pisskop when he starts befriending people like including a professor of music, Prof. Karl von Vollesteen, and a colored prisoner, Geel Piet, who coaches him in boxing. They form alliances, and each believes that all humans have equal rights. Along with the librarian, Mrs. Boxall, they establish the 'Sandwich Fund', which helps to supply the families of people in the Barberton prison.
Eventually after the trials and tribulations of his young adulthood, pisskop builds confidence in his boxing. He also learns that racism is the primary force of evil and builds compassion and empathy for the mistreated blacks and coloreds of apartheid South Africa. Geel Piet, who has a white parent and a black parent, is constantly the target of racism and has perfected taking more than he is entitled to from the prison system.
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