Arthur Bryce Courtenay, (14 August 1933 – 22 November 2012) was a South African-Australian advertising director and novelist. He is one of Australia's best-selling authors, notable for his book The Power of One. Bryce Courtenay was born in a small village in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa. He was the ‘illegitimate’ child of Maude Greer, a dressmaker, and a salesman who was already married, Arthur Ryder. He later said he was sent at the age of five to a boarding school which was more like a combination orphanage/reform school. According to Courtenay, story telling was a survival strategy he used there, Bryce Courtenay moved to Australia—after a sojourn in London—with his Australian-born wife, Benita, in 1958 and was a highly successful advertising executive before becoming a highly successful novelist.