Arthur Bryce Courtenay was a South African-Australian advertising director and novelist. He became one of Australia's best-selling authors, gaining notable fame for his book The Power of One. Courtenay's life story began in Johannesburg, where he was born illegitimately in 1933. He spent his early years in a small town amidst the Lebombo mountains, a somewhat isolated community where he grew up among farm folk and African people.

At the tender age of five, he was sent to a boarding school that functioned more as a combination orphanage and reform school. There, he learned to box, a skill that was more about survival than sport. Courtenay eventually returned to a small mountain town named Barberton, where he found a mentor in Doc, a drunken German music teacher. Doc introduced him to the wonders of nature as they explored the high mountains, providing Courtenay with what he described as the best education of his life.