The Power of One

If Bryce Courtenay is Australia's biggest selling author, and The Power of One his biggest selling, most popular and enduring book, does that make The Power of One Australia's biggest novel? Australia's habit for appropriating other country's products (EG. Crowded House, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson) aside, I'd be inclined to say no, if only because it's so completely a novel of South Africa... of South African origins and about the country itself - it's history, it's people, it's problems and it's hopes. It's tantamount to Courtenay's talent that the novel transcends these nationalistic ties and speaks to readers everywhere on a private level, charting the human condition in trying times and connecting with it's audience by tying us to the protagonist's epic journey to manhood.

PeeKay is a troubled young Rooinek (what the Afrikaners call English South Africans). He has been sent to a boarding school made up almost entirely of Boers, and with the approach of World War II the Boer children threaten to march PeeKay (along with all the other English people) into the sea when their saviour Hitler comes to liberate the Afrikaners. PeeKay wets the bed, he is bullied and beaten by a child known as the Judge, and it is only through a special meeting with a Zulu medicine man that he is able to find an inner strength that allows him to overcome these obstacles.

We follow PeeKay throughout his childhood, from World War II-era South Africa through to the beginnings of Apartheid, and witness the emergence of a special kind of intelligence, a deep desire to always win, and the strength of the 'power of one'. Through a meeting with trainguard-cum-boxer Hoppie Groenweld, PeeKay happens upon an early ambition to become welterweight champion of the world in boxing. Everything he does after this is tinged with his urgent desire to box. His adventures after this are too numerous and complex to go into detail about... he befriends a German music professor named Doc, learns how to box in a South African prison, attends an elitist school for English South Africans, becomes the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi (Zulu for 'Tadpole Angel') and works in a dangerous mine in Rhodesia. It's a colourful and unpredictable journey, and it takes us right up the beginning of PeeKay's manhood.

The Power of One is a classic. At first I read it looking for something along the lines of the film version of The Power of One, but the book and the film bear very little resemblence to one another. I'm not bagging the film, I still enjoyed it, but they are about different things. Where the film focused more on the race situation in South Africa and PeeKay's role as an equaliser between the many tribes, the book is more about PeeKay's journey to self-actualisation and the point where he triumphs over his own inner loneliness. The racial themes are still there, but the book is a little more realistic about the nature of PeeKay's inner quest.

Courtenay's technique is deceptively easy to read. Calling upon his own experiences, he bundles up South African history and kneads it into the text liberally - making for a fascinating background to PeeKay's story. The style is a first-person narrative, told by PeeKay from the age of 4 to the age of 18, and we get a curious mix of childhood perception and adult hindsight. Whilst it's not as experimental, realistic or in-the-moment as Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, it suits the purposes of The Power of One entirely, allowing for a child's-eye view coupled with an adult understanding of the bigger picture - hence we get asides and explanations about the South African situation throughout the 1940s.

Courtenay also demonstrates an almost Dickensian approach to plot and character. It's a big story and we are shown various wonderful characters throughout PeeKay's life - even the briefest-appearing character is memorable. It's a talent of Courtenay's that we don't lose ourself in the mammoth and ever-changing cast of characters. Likewise, the plot is refreshingly old fashioned - simply charting a fictional life in a non-fictional setting, without contrivances and circular subplots.

I really loved this book. I was sad to see it finish and I can see myself reading it's followup Tandia in the not too distant future. It's the kind of book that almost anyone can enjoy and - therefore - I would reccomend it to almost anyone.