Genre: Adventure, Historical Fiction
Author: Bryce Courtenay
Plot
Tandia picks up where The Power of One left off - in South Africa just following WWII and just at the beginning of the apartheid. Our hero Peekay is back, but this time he is off to the mines to earn his way to Oxford and a global education. The mines are not a pleasant place. Farther south, we meet Tandia, a young black/Indian woman who simultaneously faces the death of her father - a famous boxing judge - and a brutality so horrible at the hands of the local police that she comes to possess of a deep hatred of all white men. Tandia tells a story of hatred and healing, and of deep emotions on both sides of the apartheid. From South Africa so the American South, our characters confront racism and love.
Brian's Opinion
I picked up Tandia after reading The Power of One simply because it was one of those stories so deeply emotional and hard questioning that I could not leave the story unfinished. Simplistically, the question going in was 'Will Peekay become welterweight champion of the world?' More deeply, I wondered how Peekay would confront the apartheid as a fledgling man, and a white man at that. Tandia explores extremely difficult and terrible issues, and Bryce Courtenay is totally direct about bringing them up. No perfect world is this South Africa, and as a deeply reflective look on the real world and real history, Tandia and The Power of One may be one of the best ways to gain a form of insight into this period, short of actually asking people who were there. I recommend this book to people not afraid to dive into lengthy novels, and people open to exploring hard topics. Finally, Tandia truly is beautifully touching emotionally, and if you are looking for a read with real substance, this two-book series has it.
Read it! As an international book, Tandia is a bit hard to find, so I suggest hunting around the internet. If you are lucky, your local library will have it (link below).
Public Library Finder
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