The Power of One

In 1939 in South Africa, five-year-old Peekay is sent away to boarding school. The youngest and only English student among Afrikaners, he suffers torment by classmates and beatings from the schoolmistress. Then one day he crosses paths with a welterweight champion named Hoppie Groenewald, who lets the boy try on his boxing gloves. "The gloves felt like old friends, big yes, and very clumsy, but not strangers." Peekay had found "the equalisers." Library edition with trade jacket added.