The Power of One Study Guide

Bryce Courtenay was born in South Africa in 1933. His mother was a dressmaker. Both Courtenay and his elder sister Rosemary were the children of their mother’s longtime lover, Arthur Ryder, who already had a wife and children. According to Courtenay, his difficult childhood included periods in an orphanage when his mother couldn’t afford to care for him and bullying. Still, he managed to attend a prestigious secondary school in Johannesburg before going to London to study journalism. Courtenay met his wife Bonita Solomon in London, and as newlyweds the couple immigrated to Australia. Courtenay had a 30-year career in advertising before turning to writing. He published his first novel, the semi-autobiographical The Power of One, in 1989 and went on to become one of Australia’s most commercially successful and popular authors. His success may be in part thanks to his background in advertising and his commitment to establishing a relationship with his fans by doing things like handing out thousands of books to people he met on the street. Courtenay was a prolific writer, publishing 19 novels, three works of nonfiction, and one collection of poetry during his 30-year career. He died at the age of 79 from gastric cancer.

European exploitation of the region now known as South Africa began with the establishment of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1652. Originally intended as a waystation for trade ships, it quickly became a settler colony with company employees claiming farmland for themselves. The British invaded in 1795, and the Dutch Republic formally relinquished the territory 1815. In response, many Dutch settlers (called Boers or Afrikaners) moved inland to establish their own independent republics throughout the early 1800s. The British annexed these republics via a series of violent conflicts following the discovery of valuable gold and diamond deposits in the 1860s and 1890s. The First Boer War (1880–1881) ended in a defeat for the British thanks to the Boers’ successful guerilla tactics. However, the British ultimately claimed victory at the end of the Second Boer War (1899–1902), a particularly brutal conflict that saw the deaths of tens of thousands of Boer civilians due to British scorched-earth tactics and the use of concentration camps. The Union of South Africa was established in 1910 and gained its sovereignty from Great Britain in 1930. Although segregationist and racially oppressive policies had long been the norm under both Dutch and British colonial rule, it wasn’t until the 1940s that apartheid, the system of unbreakable White minority rule and total social segregation, solidified under the Afrikaner-majority National Party. Despite ongoing and strenuous efforts to fight for Black civil rights in South Africa, apartheid remained in place until the 1990s. It wasn’t until 1994 that Black South Africans were permitted to participate in national elections.

Because it explores the long aftermath of colonialism in Africa, readers of The Power of One are likely to see echoes in that book of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, which describes a sailor’s voyage deep into the Congo and into the terrifying and hypocritical violence of colonialism. The Power of One is also a school novel that explores similar themes to John Knowles’s A Separate Peace. Both novels are set against the backdrop of World War II and feature a protagonist struggling to understand how to become a responsible adult. For readers who feel that The Power of One ends abruptly, before Peekay has realized his goals, Courtenay published a sequel in 1992. Tandia follows a Black South African named Tandia who overcomes the poverty, oppression, and violence of her early life to become a lawyer fighting for Black civil rights throughout the apartheid era. She meets—and falls in love with—an older version of Peekay. Readers who would like more insight into the harms perpetuated by apartheid in South Africa can consult many works of nonfiction and memoir written by apartheid’s victims. Two examples of this genre are Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa, by tennis player and college professor Mark Mathabane, and Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by comedian and former Daily Show host Trevor Noah. And last but not least, readers who enjoyed the book’s use of boxing as a metaphor for life and as a vehicle for Peekay’s growing empowerment might also like Anna Whitwam’s novel Boxer Handsome, which follows the life of Bobby, a contemporary boxer living in an impoverished area of London, as he prepares for his biggest fight yet.