LOST AND FOUND IN JOHANNESBURG

354 pp., illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2014

Also published in the UK and USA in 2014.

A memoir by South African journalist and author Mark Gevisser.

"...a memoir about journeys, which begins with those his Jewish forebears made from both Ireland and Lithuania, narrowly escaping the pogroms, swiftly becomes one about boundaries. Gevisser is fascinated by the frontiers — physical, legal and psychological — separating townships from affluent suburbs, black men from white women and men from one another...Gevisser is both a journalist and a campaigning gay activist, so much of his memoir focuses on the subterfuges that closet gays and lesbians were forced to adopt in order to meet and mate in a system that was as prudish as it was racist...A humane and enlightened observer, Gevisser has pulled off what every memoirist hopes but often fails to achieve, capturing both an extraordinary chapter of history and the essence of a turbulent, shifting society via the examination of his own life." Michela Wong in the Spectator

Mark Gevisser's previous book, "Thabo Mbeki: the dream deferred", won the Sunday Times 2008 Alan Paton Prize and the NB Books 2008 Recht Malan Prize.