This book I picked up in the hallway at work, it had a "Free, take me" sign sticking up out of it, written on paper from the nearby print shop.It's a story of Peekay, a young English boy growing up in South Africa, surviving initially in a boarding school where he is regularly beaten up by Afrikaaner boys who hate him because he is English and England sent many Afrikaaners to concentration camps during the First Boer War.
He eventually finds mentors when home for vacations, and spends most of the happy times of his childhood actually in a prison where his friend and mentor Doc has been imprisoned (mainly just for being German). He starts out coming to continue taking piano lessons from Doc but finds another passion in the boxing team at the prison and builds a lengthy successful boxing career which continues on to boarding school.
It's a very strong individualist, survivalist story, another reviewer on Amazon compared it to "The Kite Runner" and it is very similar but perhaps a bit more episodic and not as emotionally jarring as "The Kite Runner".
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