The Power of One by Courtenay

Ref: Bryce Courtenay (1989). The Power of One. Ballantine.

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Summary­

• In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams, which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives and the power of one (Good Reads).

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Misc Quotes

• "We sat on one of the steps of one the rose terraces, my grandpa tapping and tamping and lighting and staring squinty-eyed through the blue tobacco smoke over the rusty roof into the pale beyond. After a long time he said, "All I know about the bible is that wherever it goes there's trouble. The only time I ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer I was with at the battle of Dundee told me that he'd once gotten hit by a Mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a Bible in his tunic pocket and the Bible saved his life. He told me that ever since he'd always carried a Bible into battle with him and he felt perfectly safe because God was in his breast pocket. We were out looking for a sergeant of the Worcester's and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry donga. In truth, I think my partner felt perfectly safe because the Boer Mausers were estimated by the British Artillery to be accurate to eight hundred yards and we were at least twelve hundred yards from enemy lines. Alas, nobody bothered to tell the Boers about the shortcomings of their brand-new German rifle, and a Mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes." He puffed at his pipe. "Which goes to prove, you can always depend on British Army information not to be accurate, the Boers to be deadly accurate, the Bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head, and finally, that God is in nobody's pocket." He seemed very pleased with this neat summary, which nevertheless wasn't a scrap of help to me.”

• "I do not come from a nation of slaves, but I have been made a slave. I come from a people who are brave men, but I am made to weep. I, who am to become a chief, have become what no man ought to be, a man without rights and without a future. I am seventeen summers. I have killed a lion and sat on the mat of the high chief, but I have been given my place. That place is not a seat at the white man's table, and that place is not a voice in the white man's indaba. My bondage is not of the white man's making. My bondage is in my own brain. Here in my head I carry the Zulu pride of my ancestors, but I also carry no learning. My stupidity is my bondage, it is the instrument of the black man's misery and despair. If the white man would give me his rights and the same voice, I would not be able to use them, I would still be in bondage. I would still be a servant, a black kaffir, an inferior human, because I would not know how to use these rights, how to make my voice felt among the people. Please, sir, my mind cries for knowledge. I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks nothing without learning. Please, sir, I am naked without knowledge. I am nothing without learning. Please, sir, give me this knowledge, give me this learning, so that I too can be a man.”

• "The glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination.”

• "The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. Hoppie's dictum to me, "First with the head and then with the heart," was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.”

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