In this gripping social history of South Africa, award winning journalist Mark Gevisser follows the family of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to make sense of the legacy of liberation struggle andunderstand thefuture of the country under Jacob Zuma.With unparalleled access to Mbeki and Zuma as well askey ANC brass, Gevisser presents an intimate yet accessible account of South Africa's past, present and future. With his stunning account of the Mbeki family's history as a backdrop, Gevisser fleshes out the very human elements of a monumental period in world history that will continue to shape African politics for years to come.

A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream

Biographies & Memoirs

Gevisser, Mark

Historical

St.Martin's Press

In this gripping social history of South Africa, award-winning journalist Mark Gevisser follows the family of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to make sense of his legacy and understand the future of the country under new President Jacob Zuma. With unparalleled access to Mbeki and Zuma, as well as other key players in the ANC, Gevisser presents an intimate yet accessible account of South Africa's past, present and future. With his stunning account of the Mbeki family's history as a backdrop, Gevisser fleshes out a monumental period in world history that will continue to shape African politics for years to come.

Community & Culture

St. Martin's: Griffin

Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

An inner life of Johannesburg that turns on the author's fascination with maps, boundaries, and transgressions Lost and Found in Johannesburg begins with a transgression―the armed invasion of a private home in the South African city of Mark Gevisser's birth. But far more than the riveting account of a break-in, this is a daring exploration of place and the boundaries upon which identities are mapped. As a child growing up in apartheid South Africa, Gevisser becomes obsessed with a street guide called Holmden's Register of Johannesburg, which literally erases entire black townships. Johannesburg, he realizes, is full of divisions between black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight; a place that "draws its energy precisely from its atomization and its edge, its stacking of boundaries against one another." Here, Gevisser embarks on a quest to understand the inner life of his city. Gevisser uses maps, family photographs, shards of memory, newspaper clippings, and courtroom testimony to chart his intimate history of Johannesburg. He begins by tracing his family's journey from the Orthodox world of a Lithuanian shtetl to the white suburban neighborhoods where separate servants' quarters were legally required at every house. Gevisser, who eventually marries a black man, tells stories of others who have learned to define themselves "within, and across, and against," the city's boundaries. He recalls the double lives of gay men like Phil and Edgar, the ever-present housekeepers and gardeners, and the private swimming pools where blacks and whites could be discreetly intimate, even though the laws of apartheid strictly prohibited sex between people of different races. And he explores physical barriers like The Wilds, a large park that divides Johannesburg's affluent Northern Suburbs from two of its poorest neighborhoods. It is this park that the three men who held Gevisser at gunpoint crossed the night of their crime. An ode to both the marked and unmarked landscape of Gevisser's past, Lost and Found in Johannesburg is an existential guide to one of the most complex cities on earth. As Gevisser writes, "Maps would have no purchase on us, no currency at all, if we were not in danger of running aground, of getting lost, of dislocation and even death without them. All maps awaken in me a desire to be lost and to be found . . . [They force] me to remember something I must never allow myself to forget: Johannesburg, my hometown, is not the city I think I know."

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

One ofTIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020. Longlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize. "[Mark] Gevisser is clear-eyed and wise enough to have a sharp sense of how tough the struggle has been, and how hard it will be now for those who have not succeeded in finding shelter from prejudice." --Colm Tóibín,The Guardian A groundbreaking look at how the issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today More than seven years in the making, Mark Gevisser'sThe Pink Line: Journeys Across the World'sQueer Frontiersis an exploration of how the conversation around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide--and describe--the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition are celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. As new globalized queer identities are adopted by people across the world--thanks to the digital revolution--fresh culture wars have emerged. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the globe, and he takes readers to its frontiers. Between sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he's encountered along the Pink Line, Gevisser offers sharp analytical chapters exploring identity politics, religion, gender ideology, capitalism, human rights, moral panics, geopolitics, and what he calls "the new transgender culture wars." His subjects include a Ugandan refugee in flight to Canada, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, a lesbian couple campaigning for marriage equality in Mexico, genderqueer high schoolers coming of age in Michigan, a gay Israeli-Palestinian couple searching for common ground, and a community of kothis--"women's hearts in men's bodies"--who run a temple in an Indian fishing village. What results is a moving and multifaceted picture of the world today, and the queer people defining it. Eye-opening, heartfelt, expertly researched, and compellingly narrated,The Pink Line is a monumental--and urgent--journey of unprecedented scope into twenty-first-century identity, seen through the border posts along the world's new LGBTQ+ frontiers.

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

An inner life of Johannesburg that turns on the author's fascination with maps, boundaries, and transgressions Lost and Found in Johannesburg begins with a transgression―the armed invasion of a private home in the South African city of Mark Gevisser's birth. But far more than the riveting account of a break-in, this is a daring exploration of place and the boundaries upon which identities are mapped. As a child growing up in apartheid South Africa, Gevisser becomes obsessed with a street guide called Holmden's Register of Johannesburg, which literally erases entire black townships. Johannesburg, he realizes, is full of divisions between black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight; a place that "draws its energy precisely from its atomization and its edge, its stacking of boundaries against one another." Here, Gevisser embarks on a quest to understand the inner life of his city. Gevisser uses maps, family photographs, shards of memory, newspaper clippings, and courtroom testimony to chart his intimate history of Johannesburg. He begins by tracing his family's journey from the Orthodox world of a Lithuanian shtetl to the white suburban neighborhoods where separate servants' quarters were legally required at every house. Gevisser, who eventually marries a black man, tells stories of others who have learned to define themselves "within, and across, and against," the city's boundaries. He recalls the double lives of gay men like Phil and Edgar, the ever-present housekeepers and gardeners, and the private swimming pools where blacks and whites could be discreetly intimate, even though the laws of apartheid strictly prohibited sex between people of different races. And he explores physical barriers like The Wilds, a large park that divides Johannesburg's affluent Northern Suburbs from two of its poorest neighborhoods. It is this park that the three men who held Gevisser at gunpoint crossed the night of their crime. An ode to both the marked and unmarked landscape of Gevisser's past, Lost and Found in Johannesburg is an existential guide to one of the most complex cities on earth. As Gevisser writes, "Maps would have no purchase on us, no currency at all, if we were not in danger of running aground, of getting lost, of dislocation and even death without them. All maps awaken in me a desire to be lost and to be found . . . [They force] me to remember something I must never allow myself to forget: Johannesburg, my hometown, is not the city I think I know."

Pink Line

Picador Paper

History

Africa

Granta Books

Guardian's Best Paperback of the Month\nONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S and FINANCIAL TIMES' BOOKS OF 2020\n'In intimate, often tender prose, Gevisser brings to life the complex movement for queer civil rights and the many people on whom it bears.' Colm Toibin, Guardian 
'Powerful... meticulously researched' Andrew McMillan, Observer Book of the Week\nSix years in the making, The Pink Line follows protagonists from nine countries all over the globe to tell the story of how LGBTQ+ Rights became one of the world's new human rights frontiers in the second decade of the twenty-first century.\nFrom refugees in South Africa to activists in Egypt, transgender women in Russia and transitioning teens in the American Mid-West, The Pink Line folds intimate and deeply affecting stories of individuals, families and communities into a definitive account of how the world has changed, so dramatically, in just a decade.\nAnd in doing so he reveals a troubling new equation that has come in to play: while same-sex marriage and gender transition are now celebrated in some parts of the world, laws to criminalise homosexuality and gender non-conformity have been strengthened in others. In a work of great scope and wonderful storytelling, this is the groundbreaking, definitive account of how issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today.

The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers

Profile Books

Thabo Mbeki: The dream deferred

Jonathan Ball Publishers

This title is a story about home and exile. It is a story, too, of political intrigue; of a revolutionary movement struggling first to defeat and then to seduce a powerful and callous enemy.

Thabi Mbeki

Leaders & Notable People

Jonathan Ball Publishers SA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gevisser, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gevisser, Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gevisser, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream

A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream

Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers

Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

Pink Line

Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers

Thabo Mbeki: The dream deferred

Thabi Mbeki