Secure The Power Of One: : Australian Childrens Classics Formulated By Bryce Courtenay Displayed In Mobi

I refrain from writing long reviews, but this wonderful book offers so much to readers, that I must indulge.
It is a broad sweeping book about rural South Africa, set in the lates ands prior to apartheid.
It imparts a real sense of this exotic country and the friction between its diverse peoples: Dutch Afrikaners, native Boers, a host of black tribes, and the English.


The protagonist Peekay is an only child, sent to boarding school at agewhen his mother is institutionalized.
He is picked on mercilessly because he is youngest and English, and misses his black nanny, His nickname is Pisskop pisshead as he wets his bed, Peekay's only friend is a rebellious chicken, Things take a change for the better, when he is sent by train to his grandfather's distant home.
He is adopted by conductor, Hoppie Groenewald, who cares for him and teaches one of this The Power of One's life lessons: "first with the head, and then with the heart.
" Hoppie is an amateur boxer, and uses his prodigious skills to beat a much larger opponent at the end of the first leg of Peekay's train journey.
Peekay immediately develops a deep passion for boxing and decides he wants to become the welterweight champ of the world.
Arriving at his grandfathers home, Peekay is devastated by the disappearance of his nanny and subjected to his mother's religious fervor.
Once again, Peekay is rescued by a mentor, Professor Karl von Vollensteen a/k/a Doc,whom he meets on a distant mountaintop.
Doc too, adopts Peekay, and teaches him about botany, especially cacti, piano, Africa, and of course, life.
As a German, Doc becomes jailed as a possible spy, but becomes a popular figure in the local prison, with inmates, guards, and the Commandant.
Meanwhile, Peekay visits Doc regularly, and eventually convinces the staff to allow him to train as a boxer.
The downtrodden criminal, Geel Piet, teaches Peekay how to box and they develop a symbiotic relationship, as Peekay smuggles tobacco into the prison.
Peekay and the local town librarian also start a postal service for the mostly black inmates, Peekay's openminded acceptance of others, accords him a mythical status with the African people in the prison and community, and he becomes revered as the "Tadpole Angel", creating a large following as his boxing career advances.


Eventually, Peekay earns a scholarship and it sent to an exclusive prep school, where he meets his next good friend and mentor, a wealthy Jew named Morrie.
Equally brilliant, the two develop businesses together, which allow them to afford getting Peekay trained at an elite boxing school.
Peekay continues his unblemished record in the ring, eventually agreeing to fight a rising black champion, who has just turned professional, even though this is not legal and theoretically, a mismatch.
And yet, there is great drama as this fighter's name is familiar to Peekay, he is a descendent of a tribal chief, and the legend of the Tadpole Angel is placed at risk.
Peekay is a highly popular student and athlete, joining the elite leadership of the prep school, but he continues to work for the people, opening a school to

teach local blacks to read and write, drawing the ire of the local white police.
Morrie is accepted to Oxford, and Peekay does not win the coveted Rhodes Scholarship that would allow them to stay together.
Instead, Peekay decides to take a grueling, dangerous job in the mines to build his strength and body mass.
Once again, Peekay befriends a loner, in this case a huge Russian, who barely speaks English, Peekay's productivity makes him the envy of all, but he stays too long in this job, leading to disaster.
My only complaint is that despite the final physical confrontation in the mine bar, with a lifelong foe, we don't know if Peekay achieves his lifelong ambition so now I need to read thepage sequel.
Given author Courtenay's gift for storytelling, I do not expect this will be too much of a chore.
Wow incredible!!!
I fell in love with Peekay even 'before' he was five years old, starting in South Africa, when he shares of being nursed from his lovely black nanny before being sent to boarding school.
although we follow him from agetofrom the late's to mid's,

Our oldest daughter attended a boarding High School in Michigan for a short time an academic/arts school.
The family separation was painful, I can't begin to imagine sending ayear old away to a boarding school even in the 'best' of conditions.

And the fact that this story is inspired by the authors real life, for me, this is one of the most wrenching parts of the entire book, "being sent away from his family at agefrom 'love' he was receiving to 'hatred' he was walking into.


Peekay is bullied and abused almost immediately upon arrival as ayear old at his boarding school.
He's the youngest child in the school,
Missing the comfort of his Black nanny Peekay is English and white, who would soothe his hurts.
. . missing his mother who was sent away due to a nervous breakdown, Peekay was the first live example of the congenital hate they carried for his kind.

"The Boer War had created great malevolent feelings against the English, who were called the 'rooineks'.
It was a hate that had entered the Afrikaner bloodstream and pocked the hearts and minds of the next generation".

Given that Peekay, spoke English, he pronounced sentences that killed their grandfathers and grandmothers to the world's first concentration camps.
Little Peekay had no advance warning that he was wicked before coming to the school,

One of the other kids called 'Judge' abused Peekey regularly, Peekay even made a deal with him to do the Judge's homework and make sure he didn't fail but he still continues to abuse him.
really 'tortured him.
We see how Peekay begins to survive horrific conditions at such a young tender age: Peekay says:
"One thing got to them more than anything else.
They could make me cry, Even the Judge, with all of the fear he could provoke, could not make me cry, I suspect they even began to admire me a bit, Many as them brothers my age at home, and they knew how easy it is for a fiveyearold to cry.
In fact, I had turned six but nobody had told me, so in my head, I was still five".

"Not being able to cry was the hardest part for me as well, Crying can't be a good camouflage, In truth, my willpower had very little to do with my resolve never to cry, I had learned a special trick and, in the process, had somehow lost the knack of turning on the tap".


Peekay is a diamond in the rough, an inspiring character. He's smart, open minded, and doesn't have an ounce of bitterness or hatred in him, He develops meaningful friendships with teachers and mentors who teach him to read, He meets a healer, and a boxer, We learn a tremendous amount about boxing, We also learn a lot about the history of South Africa through the eyes of a child.


The themes of discrimination were well defined by the author: the Boers vs, the English South Africans vs, the Germans the Jews vs, the Germans white Africans vs, the Black Africans.
Violence is graphic so be warned,

It's a cruel and beautiful world we live in!
,

“ the power of one one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination.
”

The fictionalized biography of Peekay, a young man born into a profoundly racist WW II South Africa, is so compelling, so graphic, so gutwrenching, so moving and so gripping, it is all but impossible to believe that it is Bryce Courtenays debut novel.
Like Jeffrey Archers KANE AND ABEL, Herman Wouks THE WINDS OF WAR or Khaled Hosseinis THE KITE RUNNER, Peekays personal story is credible, moving, and unfailingly interesting.
At the same time, like Lawrence Hills THE BOOK OF NEGROES or Richard Wrights BLACK BOY, the endemic, deeply rooted racism is stomachchurning, disturbing and shocking whites hate blacks, Pentecostal Christians hate Jews, South Africans hate Brits, Nazis hate everyone who isnt Nazi.
s ands apartheid South Africa is a dangerous, violent, distressed and, frankly, very ugly country that exemplifies hatred but Peekay, despite the blockades lined up in front of him, is determined to rise above it all.
With the help of black men and women, his eyes are firmly fixed on the welterweight boxing championship of the world.


And the writing was beyond brilliant, Peekays friend and mentor, Doc von Vollensteen, was imprisoned for the temerity of having been born German at a time when Hitler was ravaging Europe.
The prison concert scene, for example, in which Doc debuted his piano composition “Concerto for the Great Southland”, sung by the black inmates in a polyglot male chorus of mixed tribal languages, was one of the most moving segments of writing that Ive ever clapped eyes on.


THE POWER OF ONE and its sequel TANDIA comprise a rather dauntingpage epic but I was simply astonished at how quickly the opening novel sped by.
Despite its length, I was sorry to see it end but Im looking forward to cracking the metaphorical binding on the sequel.


Highly, highly recommended,

Paul Weiss One of my favorite books! This is a truly inspirational historical fiction about of boyhood in South Africa at the birth of apartheid.
Follow the life of a British child who comes of age amidst resentful Boers who are recovering from their own persecution while simultaneously championing the causes of Hitler in Germany.
This precocious boy struggles to understand the clash of races and racism while simultaneously overcoming boundaries through the medium of competitive boxing.


One perhaps could make the arguement that a tinge of racism lingers in the storyline itself due to the fact that the main character, a white boy, becomes the perceived savior and idol of the native African tribesmen sort of like Ben Kingsley, a Brit, portraying Gandhi onscreen.
However, it is still a wonderful book in which the reader becomes immersed in the story, place and time.
When talking about sitelinkThe Power of One, it is easy to be distracted by "the power of one" itself and place ultimate importance on Peekay's slippery personal philosophy.
But to do so to the exclusion of all else but racism is to read only a small portion of sitelinkBryce Courtenay's masterwork.


sitelinkThe Power of One also deals with class, religion, science, obsession, faith vs, reason, objectivism, homosocial intimacy, and in one of the finest literary expressions of its kind, the importance of violence.


Peekay's use of violence is controlled and seemingly benevolent, but he doesn't just use violence, he needs violence.
It is the very basis of his obsession with becoming the Welterweight Champion of the World, It is at the root of everything he fights for and against, And it is the question and the answer to the defining struggle of Peekay's life,

One need only look to the final pages of sitelinkThe Power of One for the answer to the question.
Peekay savagely destroys Botha, the Judge that started him on the road to violence while Peekay is violent in self defense, he perpetrates his violence with a ruthlessness and controlled savagery that dwarfs any of his childhood persecutions at the Judge's hands.
The final, brutal mutilation of Botha an act that likely raises few eyebrows amongst readers directed as it is at a symbol we consider pure evil is an overtly violent catharsis that brings peace to Peekay's spirit but not an end to his need for violence.


It is difficult to see Peekay's conquering of Botha as anything but just, Not only is Botha responsible for the abuse that dehumanized Peekay as a child although Botha was a child himself at the time of the abuse and about to take Peekay's life, but Courtenay overdetermines Botha's desert by making him a branded acolyte of Adolph Hitler, a Nazi racist who is apparently beyond redemption.


But beneath and behind this easy rationalization of Peekay's violence is an important commentary on our need for violence.


Violence isn't something that we need to erase from human behavior because we actually need it especially on a personal level where it is most in danger of being sterilized from our lives already it is only an appropriate response in our popular mythology.
Violence is something we need to control and embrace and realize is part of who we are as humans.
Violence is essential to both men and women, Violence is an integral part of our humanity,

Violence of the kind Peekay engages in against Botha serves several purposes: it is defensive it is purifying it is redemptive it is responsible it is empowering and it is healing.


Many find themselves supporting Peekay's actions without a second thought, But were a similar situation to play out in our North American reality, Peekay would find himself going to prison for a very long time, and most would agree that while he was defending himself at first, Peekay took things too far and deserves to be punished.


Amongst its many concerns, sitelinkThe Power of One tells us that we need to reconsider our personal relationship with violence.
It reminds us that we need to keep violence as a tool of our own, rather than passing it off as a tool for our governments, our armies, or any other persecutors who may use it against us.
And so long as we use violence "first with our head, then with our heart" it can lead to positive change.


Even if we never use violence ourselves, however, even if we only admit that we are violent animals who need violence as deeply as we need love making or tenderness, even if all we do is recognize its place in our human natures, we can start to overcome things that before we simply let overcome us.
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