The Power of One

In the Ballantine publicity department, we have an informal book club. It usually gets started is when one of us reads a book, loves it, and then passes it on to a friend in the department. Once one person has read a book and loves it, then we ALL have to read it too! THE POWER OF ONE by Bryce Courtenay was one of those books. You may have seen the movie with Morgan Freeman, but I urge you to read the book because it was much better than the movie. It's a coming-of-age story of a young boy in South Africa. He has such a hard time of things! He's picked on as a young boy, then he befriends an older man who teaches him the wonders of life. The book is beautifully written, and the story is extremely compelling. If you liked Anna Quindlen's OBJECT LESSONS or Edward Albee's A DEATH IN THE FAMILY or John Irving's A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, you will love this book too.

Jennifer Richards
Ballantine Books Publicity

"Unabashedly uplifting."
THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Set in a world torn apart, where man enslaves his fellow man and freedom remains elusive, THE POWER OF ONE is the moving story of one young man's search for the love that binds friends, the passion that binds lovers, and the realization that it takes only one to change the world. A weak and friendless 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 irrersistible force of all: the Power of One.