Bryce Courtenay, Australian Novelist, Dies at 79 Bryce Courtenay, an Australian advertising executive who started writing novels after his 50th birthday and became perhaps the most popular writer in his country, died on Thursday at his home in Canberra. In September, Mr. Courtenay announced on his Facebook page that his forthcoming book, his 21st, would be his last, because he had terminal stomach cancer. Penguin Group, which published his book "Jack of Diamonds" earlier this month, announced his death in a joint statement with Mr. Courtenay's wife, Christine. Mr. Courtenay was known in the United States for just one book, his first, "The Power of One," published in 1989. A fast-paced, hyperbolic coming-of-age story set in South Africa in the 1930s and 1940s, it told of the Dickensian childhood of Peekay, a white South African of English descent, replete with persecution and triumph. "On almost any scale of measurement, "The Power of One," has everything," Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in a review in The New York Times. Suspense, the exotic, violence; snakes, bats and Nazis; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama in the boxing ring and disasters in a copper mine. The book became an international sensation, selling more than 8 million copies, and it was adapted into a 1992 film with Morgan Freeman and Stephen Dorff. Though Mr. Courtenay never had a success on that scale again, he annually pumped out doorstop-size novels - including "Jessica," about the tribulations of a farm girl, set in the Australian bush country against the backdrop of World War I; and "The Potato Factory," a picaresque novel set in 19th-century London and Australia, featuring the adventures of a thief and a prostitute, among others - whose episodic, incident-filled, often world-traveling contents routinely propelled him to the top of Australian best-seller lists. After his death The Sydney Morning Herald reported that his 21 books, translated into 17 languages, sold more than 20 million copies, asserting that "Courtenay was Australia's biggest-selling author of the past 20 years." Never a critic's darling, he was perturbed by the snobbery of Australia's literati, but didn't mind being a popular success at all. "I guess I have to suffer your slings and arrows," brisbanetimes.com reported his telling a gathering of critics at the Melbourne Writers Festival, "but would you mind if I kept the outrageous fortune?" Mr. Courtenay's own tale was something of a picaresque; he has said "The Power of One" was drawn from his own life. He was born in Johannesburg on Aug. 14, 1933, the son of an unmarried dressmaker and a salesman. By his own accounts, he spent several years in an orphanage, where he survived by learning to box and tell stories. Australian news reports in recent years have called into question some of Mr. Courtenay's autobiographical claims. He worked in a copper mine to earn money to study journalism in London, where he met an Australian woman, Benita Solomon; he followed her to Sydney in 1958, and they married. He never became a journalist, but stumbled into advertising and became a successful creative director, though the stress of his profession, he said, caused him to drink several bottles of wine a day and smoke several packs of cigarettes. In his 40s he gave up both smoking and drinking and took up running. And in his early 50s he began to write fiction. Mr. Courtenay pursued novel writing with a grueling schedule. He started a new novel every January, writing six days a week, 12 hours a day until he finished in midsummer, delivering a chapter at a time to give his publisher in time to publish the book before Christmas. "People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents," he once said. For the rest of the year, with the savvy of a former ad man, he would devote himself to promoting his work; he reportedly hired skywriters to scribble "Jessica" across the sky, and persuaded Penguin to hire actors to pose on trains reading his novels. He made a habit of asking for the address of anyone who stopped him on the street and then sending that person a signed copy of a book. He estimated that he gave away 2,500 books a year, believing that those people would commend him to others for his pleasantness and generosity, if for no other reason. His marriage to Ms. Solomon ended in divorce; she died in 2007. Besides his wife, the former Christine Gee, his survivors include two sons, Brett and Adam. A third son, Damon, was a hemophiliac and died of AIDS in 1991 after a transfusion of H.I.V.-infected blood; Mr. Courtenay told his son's story in a book, "April Fool's Day." After receiving his cancer diagnosis, Mr. Courtenay wrote an epilogue to "Jack of Diamonds," which is about an itinerant musician during the Depression, in which he explained to readers what would happen to its main character in the sequel he had planned to write next, and thanked them for their loyalty. In a recent video interview he explained that his "use-by date has come up." "I don't mind that, I've had a wonderful life," he said. Part of that wonderful life has been those people who have been kind enough to pick up a Bryce Courtenay book, and read it, and enjoy it and buy the next one, and be with me in what has been for me an incredible journey. And all I'd like to say is, as simply as I possibly can, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.