"An inner-life of Johannesburg that turns on the author's fascination with maps, boundaries, and transgressions"--

As a boy growing up in 1970s Johannesburg Mark Gevisser would play 'Dispatcher', a game that involved sitting in his father's parked car (or in the study) and sending imaginary couriers on routes across the city, mapped out from Holmden's Register of Johannesburg. As the imaginary fleet made its way across the troubled city and its tightly bound geographies, so too did the young dispatcher begin to figure out his own place in the world. At the centre of Lost and Found in Johannesburg is the account of a young boy who is obsessed with maps and books, and other boys. Mark Gevisser's account of growing up as the gay son of Jewish immigrants, in a society deeply affected - on a daily basis - by apartheid and its legacy, provides a uniquely layered understanding of place and history. It explores a young man's maturation into a fully engaged and self-aware citizen, first of his city, then of his country and the world beyond. This is a story of memory, identity and an intensely personal relationship with the City of Gold. It is also the story of a violent home invasion and its aftermath, and of a man's determination to reclaim his home town.

This is a story of dispossession, a meditation on place, home and identity, as well as a deeply personal account of the social ills of South Africa and the triumph of its people.

Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa’s largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa’s premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the contributors to this collection reassess classic theories of metropolitan modernity as they explore the experience of “city-ness” and urban life in post-apartheid South Africa. They portray Johannesburg as a polycentric and international city with a hybrid history that continually permeates the present. Turning its back on rigid rationalities of planning and racial separation, Johannesburg has become a place of intermingling and improvisation, a city that is fast developing its own brand of cosmopolitan culture. The volume’s essays include an investigation of representation and self-stylization in the city, an ethnographic examination of friction zones and practices of social reproduction in inner-city Johannesburg, and a discussion of the economic and literary relationship between Johannesburg and Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. One contributor considers how Johannesburg’s cosmopolitan sociability enabled the anticolonial projects of Mohandas Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Journalists, artists, architects, writers, and scholars bring contemporary Johannesburg to life in ten short pieces, including reflections on music and megamalls, nightlife, built spaces, and life for foreigners in the city. Contributors: Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lindsay Bremner, David Bunn, Fred de Vries, Nsizwa Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Stefan Helgesson, Julia Hornberger, Jonathan Hyslop, Grace Khunou, Frédéric Le Marcis, Xavier Livermon, John Matshikiza, Achille Mbembe, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Tom Odhiambo, Achal Prabhala, AbdouMaliq Simone

Hailed in the Times Literary Supplement as 'probably the finest piece of non-fiction to come out of South Africa since the end of apartheid', The Dream Deferred is back in print and updated with a brilliant new epilogue. The prosperous Mbeki clan lost everything to apartheid. Yet the family saw its favourite son, Thabo, rise to become president of South Africa in 1999. A decade later, Mbeki was ousted by his own party and his legacy is bitterly contested – particularly over his handling of the AIDS epidemic and the crisis in Zimbabwe. Through the story of the Mbeki family, award-wining journalist Mark Gevisser tells the gripping tale of the last tumultuous century of South Africa life, following the family's path to make sense of the liberation struggle and the future that South Africa has inherited. At the centre of the story is Mbeki, a visionary yet tragic figure who led South Africa to freedom but was not able to overcome the difficulties of his own dislocated life. It is 15 years since Mbeki was unceremoniously dumped by the ANC, giving rise to the wasted years under Jacob Zuma. With the benefit of hindsight, and as Mbeki reaches the age of 80, Gevisser examines the legacy of the man who succeeded Mandela. '...essential reading for anyone intrigued by South Africa's complex philosopher-king.' - The Economist