Bryce Courtenay books are so powerful in so many way.. thank you
It was a time when it was better to be born a white man's dog rather than a black human. Tandia illustrated what the non-whites in South Africa suffered, and brutally so. Reading it, I can see why the oppressed would turn to fear and hate (and who would not? when life is nothing but misery and humiliations).

Yet the books also showed me why the oppressors did so. The white people honestly believed that they were decent, God-fearing, law-abiding people. How could they be capable of such inhuman cruelty? The answer was simply that they consider the non-whites as lesser people ("They were not like us! Those dumb violent kaffirs!") and therefore not "one of them". There was also the paranoia and fierce belief of keeping the purity of the blood. Those two reasoning combined was enough justification for them.

Then, how could one break this system of hate and violence? This was what one of the protagonist, Peekay, struggled to do. He entered law school, became a barrister, and did his best to protect the oppressed using the law despite the law itself being unfair. His effort was ultimately futile, for hate and madness has consumed the entire nation.

But in the end, haven't we become a better people? The apartheid was eventually abolished (I have to read more to find out how) and so did slavery in other countries. And yet, the economic disparity now is such that the poor live like slaves. Even the hate come back easily. The inequality between the blacks and the whites in the US is a dangerous symptom. The right wing extremists are now taking hold of the Europeans, even in Germany the nation that already went through Nazi. It seems people can forget the past quite easily (I think migrants is a dirty word in US and Europe now). The seed of hate has been sown, and when the violence ripened and exploded, will there be any hope left? I remain skeptic, for hate comes easily, while forgiveness is hard to find. I can only hope that it won't happen in my lifetime.

I first read Courtenay's The Power of One. Tandia continues the story of some of the earlier characters and introduces new ones. Yes, you can read Tandia without reading The Power of One, but you do yourself disservice if you don't read TPOO first and then continue with Tandia. Both are long, meaty books. The setting in TPOO is South Africa and for Tandia is South Africa and England. Don't be put off by the sport of boxing. It is important to the overall plot of the both books. But it doesn't detract from the powerful story of the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa, and all of its ugly tentacles.

Started this back in 2016(?) after the man I was dating at the time loaned it to me and told my it was his favourite book. I hadn’t read The Power Of One so I didn’t have any expectations going in. I did not enjoy it but persevered for a while until finally giving it up. I found it incredibly depressing, and looking back, I think it was probably somewhat telling that my 31-year-old boyfriend gave this to me, his 19-year-old girlfriend to read.

I loved The Power of One. I did not love this one. The ending felt like a cop out and was quite disappointing. The fight scenes could have been shorter and there were some things glossed over, such as the last sham trial of the evil cop, Jannie Geldenhuis. There were two tapings, one a confession by the man hired by Geldenhuis to detonate a bomb, and one by the police, of his abhorrent and illegal behaviors and yet the only mention was that "Geldenhuis was acquitted". The book does expose the gross inequities between Afrikaners and blacks in the 50's, 60's and 70's and definitely makes clear how hard the road has been to some sort of equity. Might no be trying another Courtenay again very soon.