Uhh it was a school book so it wasn’t that good and I used spark notes for like half of it anyways

I hardly know where to begin writing this review. This book had been on my to-read list for a long time. I finally decided to take the plunge and listen to the Audible version, narrated by the fantastic Humphrey Bowers (who really brought SHANTARAM to life also). And now it's over. Twenty hours spent getting to know the wonderful Peekay, and now I'm done? This is one of those books that isn't really over when you finish it. It stays with you and the characters live on inside your head.That's really the highest compliment I can pay a book.

The story is so hard to describe without making it sound simplistic. It is a coming of age story, a tale of friendship and history and love. It's the kind of book I already know I will find myself recommending to all sorts of people. I can see it appealing to young and old, men and women, which is a rare thing to come across. There is such humanity and thoughtfulness in this story, it's got humor, but a great depth, too. Since it is told by a boy, growing into young adulthood, he sees a lot of the political and social strife of the South African people though the eyes of a child, which adds such a strong emotional element to the story.

I feel a bit at a loss now, and don't quite know what to pick up next. I think it will have to be something entirely different, for it to have a chance, and for me not to compare it unfavorable to THE POWER OF ONE.

Needless to say, once I have let some time pass for this story to sink in, I will be seeking out Bryce Courtenay's many other books. I only wish I could write to him, and tell him how much I enjoyed his book, sadly he passed on two years ago. As I understand it, this story was largely autobiographical, which makes it that much more fascinating. Highly recommended!!

Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com

One of the most boring books I have tried to read this year and I believe I have quit on about 50 books which is a new record for me. This has some real horror so you don't want to read it. It has left a scar on my mind.

An absolutely wonderful read with amazing characters. South African historical fiction. Highly recommended.

Very moving. A weak and friendless English boy growing up in South Africa during World War II, Peekay turns to two older men, one black and one white, to show him how to find the courage to dream, to succeed, to triumph over a world when all seems lost, and to inspire him to summon up the most powerful force - the power of one. (excerpted from editorial reviews)

This was a curious book because I never really knew which direction it was headed in. You would think Peekay was headed in one direction and then things would change. It was also a wonderful book and I had tears of joy and victory in my eyes more than once. The narrator was beyond brilliant. Peekay often made comments in a very dry way and the narrator really added some expression to these parts. He was wonderful and even if I listened to him in a dozen books I would always associate him with this one.

My personal favorite of the humorous bits was the discussion over "His house has many mansions". In that case Peekay didn't seem to be intentionally being humorous so much as trying to make sense of things. It was still funny.

When talking about The 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 Bryce Courtenay's masterwork.

The 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 The 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, The 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.

This novel by Australian author Bryce Courtenay was published in 1989 and takes place in the 1930s and 40s in South Africa where Courteney grew up. The story is narrated by a young boy named Peekay who shares several years of his life story. It begins with a difficult early childhood but moves on to success as Peekay comes of age in the complicated world of South Africa’s political, social and cultural context.

Peekay was raised by a black nanny until the age of four. We hear nothing of his father but his mother was frail, nervous and suffered from frequent headaches. His grandfather helped raise him but when his mother was institutionalized with a mental breakdown, Peekey was sent to boarding school. The school was run by a principal more concerned with maintaining control over the students and the steady stream of tuition fees than with the well-being of her students. As the youngest boy in the school, Peekay was brutally bullied by a boy he called the Judge who taunted him because he wet his bed. The Judge and his fellow bullies gave him the nickname “Pisskoff” which eventually became “Peekay”, the name he used the rest of his life.

Peekay meets a number of people who teach him valuable lessons and influence his life. They include a chance meeting with Hoppie Groenewald, a young boxer who taught him “the power of one”, a belief that with one heart, one mind, one plan and one determination, a man could make his way through life armed with the belief that the world was not specifically arranged to bring about his undoing. The power of one was the power to believe in oneself, to think beyond the powers of normal concentration and dare your courage to follow your thoughts. Hoppie taught Peekay to overcome adversity through a mantra that he would forever keep in mind: “first with the head, then with the heart”. He learned that winning was something you worked at intellectually, that emotions clouded the mind and were its natural enemy. In boxing it meant that the mind was the athlete and the body simply the means it used to box better. With this knowledge Peekay came to believe that even though he was a small boy, he could defeat those who were bigger than himself. It gave him a defense system, confidence and hope as well as his ultimate goal: to become the welterweight champion of the world, a goal he reaffirmed to himself silently and frequently throughout his childhood.

Another critical person in his life was Professor Karl Von Volllensteen, a music professor and botanist Peekay called “Doc”. Doc taught him music and everything he knew about the natural world of desert plants and animals. Together with Miss Boxall the librarian and Miss Bornstein another teacher, Peekay learned everything from science to literature and how to play chess. They taught him to read for meaning, to use the library to follow up what he questioned or could not understand. It was not a traditional education, but it did teach him how to think and Peekay knew more than most boys his age. When Europe became embroiled in war, Doc was arrested, charged with being an unregistered alien and a possible spy and sent to prison. Peekay maintained Doc’s garden of desert cacti at his vacant home and visited him every day. He obtained and catalogued new plants, continued his piano lessons and learned everything he could from his mentor. On his visits to the prison Peekay heard about Geel Piet, a man who reportedly had a superior knowledge of boxing. Piet was a half-caste, a man who was neither white nor black, was hated by both sides and belonged to neither. He was an incorrigible prisoner, a survivor who knew the prison system and had great influence behind those walls where he ran the black market. Peekay, anxious to advance his boxing career devised a system that worked for both of them, offering Piet tobacco for his black market in exchange for boxing lessons. During his hours in the prison with Doc or working with Piet on his boxing, Peekay came to appreciate the difficult lives of the prisoners and developed a letter writing and mail system so the prisoners could communicate with their loved ones. The prisoners came to admire the young boy who tried to make their life more tolerable and they enjoyed watching him box as he gradually became more skillful under Piet’s tutelage. Although Peekay was small, he was always boxing boys bigger than himself, a fact that helped him learn to use his skills wisely. He came to be known to the prisoners as “The Tadpole Angel”, a symbol of their oppression and someone sympathetic to their lot in life.

Peekay earned a scholarship to the elite Prince of Wales School in Johannesburg and entered a very different environment, a place not normally associated with boxing which was now Peekay’s passion and the sport through which he was negotiating his way through life. He meets Morrie Levy and for the first time he has a best friend his own age. They become partners, making money on various gambling ventures and even develop their own bank. Peekay continues to improve his boxing and the black crowds watching him fight grow larger. He has become a symbol of hope for them, a symbol of hope against oppression.

Peekay wants to go to Oxford but needs money for the tuition. He also needs to increase his muscle mass to maximize his boxing abilities. He travels to Northern Rhodesia to work in the copper mines where the work is extremely dangerous but pays well. There he meets a miner named Rasputin who not only saves Peekay’s life but also provides him the legacy to continue his education. It is following his experience in the mines that Peekay is confronted once more by the Judge, his childhood tormentor from boarding school who bullied him mercilessly when he was a young boy.

This book is well written and Courtenay’s narrative is filled with detailed descriptions of boxing matches and the beautiful African landscape. The passages detailing the racism and political tension sent me back to the history books to better understand the political and social context of that time and appreciate how forward thinking Peekay’s actions were given the culture and the time in which he was raised. It was a time when the white man was automatically considered intellectually, culturally and socially superior to the Black African, who was simply looked on with scorn.

This is a great book with several messages, its strongest the power of hope and perseverance. As a character, Peekay is resilient and seems almost invincible, able to learn important lessons from everyone he meets and facing hardships that would daunt anyone. He is an extremely likeable boy and the reader pulls for him as he confronts the challenges life presents him. But he appears to be without flaws, good at so many things and such a stranger to failure that he seems altogether unrealistic. After his experience at boarding school, he appeared to succeed at everything he faced. As the reader continues through his story, he no longer wonders if Peekay will succeed, he expects him to, the only reason to read further, to find out how. That drained some of the tension from the narrative, making it less interesting. But the characters are well drawn. Peekay, Doc, Geel Piet and Miss Boxall, in my mind are the best. Like Peekay, they all had issues they had to confront in life which made them realistic as well as sympathetic.

Some have been critical of the length of the book and I agree it is long, but not overly so. I was engaged in the story from it first pages until the end.

A great, enjoyable read which I recommend.

Where, oh where do I start with this review? I noticed a few months ago that this book kept appearing in others' Favorites lists, impressed that it has such a following after 20 years. My overall verdict is that I derived some enjoyment from reading the book, at least in parts, but found it to be incredibly lacking and frustrating in others. Part of my issue with this book was that it was just plain written wrong. Not necessarily badly, just wrong. Had the entire story been written by a more adept author, it would have been, first, believable, and second, influential. *SPOILER ALERT!*

When I started reading the story, I found the main character, Peekay, endearing. He was just the type of character that makes a book vivid and appealing. I enjoyed the beginning stories of Peekay and Nanny, of Peekay and Grandpa Chook, of the horrible Judge and Jury at boarding school, and especially enjoyed Peekay's introduction to boxing by Hoppie. But as soon as Peekay had his life's ambition set in stone (to be the Welterweight Champion of the World), my issues with the story began in earnest. I started with these questions:
What was the purpose in Peekay's name? (The reader doesn't really find out. It's a gimmick. I think the author wanted the reader to divine that Peekay chose his own path, and thus his own name, his strange name of Peekay sets him apart from others and it's supposed to give weight to The Power of One title. All of these literary tools are fine and good when done correctly. Courtenay just doesn't deliver here.
As I moved through the book, I started tallying up everything that Peekay could do (and do amazingly), and those things he failed at. Let's see:
He had a magical chicken.
He easily recognizes and can verbalize his distrust of Evangelicalism, and makes conscious decisions about his religious beliefs (starting at what, age 5?)
He befriends much older people than himself and essentially lives in their world as a peer.
He becomes an expert on succulents.
He is by far the best student at school.
He recognizes the cruelty inherent in Apartheid and racisim, despite being raised by a cooky Evangelical mother and incommunicative grandfather.
He has an innate ability to connect with people of all races. Going along with this:
He can speak about, oh, 5 different languages fluently.
He is able to relate with prisoners and vice versa.
He develops a highly functional letter-writing and smuggling operation in the prison.
He finds the Crystal Cave of Africa with his best friend, Doc, who is about 80 years old. I can't even get into the whole "Crystal Cave of Africa" commentary. What was that about?
Doc composes a piece that unites all the African tribes of prisoner in joyous song, a feat which Peekay instigated and the piece later becomes basically the "anthem" of Africa.
He is essentially a Jesus like figure to the African people the entire way through the book.
He is accepted into the elite academic team called "Sinjun's People" - there is no point to this story in the book, for it adds nothing to the mix aside from one more example of how amazing Peekay is.
He is an excellent rugby player.
He is an excellent chess player.
He starts a school of literacy for black Africans.
He can debate with his friend Morrie in the same unbelievable way that the Dawson's Creek kids could speak way too well for their age.
He is naturally an expert mine worker.
He wins EVERY SINGLE BOXING MATCH he has ever been in.
He fails at nothing.
These are just a sample of my observations (there is a word limit on these reviews).

I was quickly tired of all these amazing things that Peekay could do, or be, or amount to. I was increasingly frustrated with Courtenay’s unforgivable mistakes. If only he had not written it in first person. If you have 500 pages of a small boy telling you how amazing he is, and how he is a legend to the people of Africa, then you start to think him a bit big for his britches. I felt like Courtenay had just read A Prayer for Owen Meany and decided to write a book about a smaller-than-average boy dealing with injustices and obstacles, who nonetheless overcomes his situation. (Is it a coincidence that Owen Meany was also published in 1989?) But the difference is that Owen Meany was written in third person. And it was written by Irving, who knows how to write about a savior-like figure and legend without instilling disbelief in the reader. And Irving doesn't choose such a predicable, non-descript title for his books, either. "The Power of One" could be the title to any Barnes & Noble featured self-help book on improving your self-image. It's a ridiculous concept for a boy of 5 to grasp and work toward all his life. And it's a crummy title for a fictional book.

Finally, the ending. Oh, the ending. I sensed that Courtenay was done writing about Peekay, so he just gave up. He sent Peekay off to work in the mines. Peekay almost gets killed but miraculously doesn't. Frankly, I was wishing he would be killed because at least that ending would have reinforced the entire 500 page theme of "Peekay as a martyr for the African people." Oh wait - that would have been way too dangerously close to plagiarizing Owen Meany.
So instead Peekay is recovering from the accident and, in the final pages of the book, encounters a crazed Botho, ironically the man on the other end of Peekay's extraordinary mining work - the man that has reaped the rewards and riches of Peekay's fantastic ability in the mines. Botho is out to kill Peekay (only because he is drug induced by the fumes of the mines) and, surprise, surprise, turns out to be the former childhood bully of Peekay's; the individual whose terror upon Peekay spawned the concept of "The Power of One" - to overcome adversity, depending only upon yourself. What irony - Peekay and "The Judge" (Botho) meet again in such circumstances! Once again, Courtenay has the chance to really set the story on edge and have Botho kill Peekay, thus shattering all hope of Peekay being the most amazing person that ever lived. Our fearless Peekay instead beats Botho to a pulp. And the book ends.

That's it, it's over. All this talk about his number one goal of being Welterweight Champion of World. Courtenay doesn't even give the reader the courtesy of telling us how he accomplishes the goal.

This book got me more worked up than others I have read, for the simple fact that the story really did have potential. It was a worthy piece of fiction that was destroyed by ineptitude. What a shame.

This is the story of Peekay, a young boy growing up in South Africa before, during, and after World War II, and the good people he met along his way to becoming the welterwieght boxing champion of the world. The memorable characters included (among many) Giel Peet, an imprisoned black man who taught Peekay to box; Doc, a gentle 6'7" German professor who taught Peekay to love nature and music and books; and, Miss Boorstein, a brilliant Jewish teacher who fostered Peekay's intellectual genius through her guidance and tutoring.
I learned many things in this book- the complex art of boxing, how bad and inhumane apartheid is, and how much more I might have accomplished if I had grown up in an era where there was no television or other distractions. I know I would have read more and practised that piano more and given of myself more as well. I also find myself wishing for those mentors like Peekay's who saw the great promise he had and gently guided him to his full potential.
Through this book I also learned to appreciate the idea of the "voice" of the writer. The book began when Peekay was about five and ended when he was about 18. Along the way his words slowly matured and changed from that of a young child to that of an educated young man.
Finally, I had no idea how bad apartheid is. I had heard talk of it, but did not really understand the indignities the colored race suffered in South Africa at the hand of the ruling white race. Racism is bad and I think we are to fight it wherever and whenever we encounter it or at least try to help our fellow man like Peekay did.

I enjoyed this book, in fact more than I thought I would. I learned much about the struggle and the racism in South Africa. I listened to the audio of this and also read some. The narrator is excellent! Peekay was a wonderful character and great storyteller. Many of the secondary characters were wonderful as well. Do I recommend this read? Absolutel!!!

I just finished reading The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay which was recommended to me by JK in our little cross country virtual book club. Divided into three parts, this is a story of a boy named Peekay coming of age in 1930-1950's South Africa. So, we've got major historical things happening - Boer War aftermath, Hitler Germany and WWII, the buddings of Apartheid. And then you have this really small boy going through hell at age 5 in a boarding school and learning at this infant stage in life how to survive. His power grows with each new and colorful mentor that he (and we) meets along the way. "First with the head and then with the heart," is his mantra throughout the story. There is little I love more than a good piece of fiction with brilliant and richly described narrative. I just found that a movie was made about the book in 1992... I'm definitely interested in checking it out but I don't want to ruin the absoloodle perfection of this story so I may skip it.