Reviews and Endorsements
Colm Toibin, The Guardian
“Astute and nuanced…. Engrossing…. This is a valuable book not only for the quality of Gevisser’s analysis and the scope of his research, but because he spends a good deal of time with the people on whose lives he focuses. He does not just sail into such cities as Cairo, Nairobi, Kampala, Ramallah and Istanbul, interview a few gay locals, deplore their plight and depart. He sticks around; he finds people whose lives he can follow over a couple of years. He hangs out with them, enjoys their company; he renders them in all their complexity…. In [these] sections, Gevisser becomes almost a novelist…. 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.”
Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
“In this masterful recounting of sexuality and identity around the globe, Mark Gevisser achieves an almost shocking empathy. His accounts are riveting, brilliantly researched, liberal, and forthright. He talks to people with and without privilege, of every race and of every nationality, limning the aspects of queer experience that are universal and those that are local. In intimate, often tender prose, he brings to life the complex movement for queer civil rights and the many people on whom it bears. Whether recounting suffering or triumph, Gevisser is a clear-sighted, fearless, and generous guide.”
Samantha Allen, author of Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States
“No one understands queerness from an armchair — and few have captured that truth better than Mark Gevisser. The Pink Line is a vital exploration of queerness around the globe, searching and intimate but also expansive in its scope. Like all the best writing about LGBTQ lives, this book clearly changed its author. It would be impossible not to be transformed by the reading of it.”
Mark’s journalism and essays.
Pink Line Articles
Mark has been publishing about The Pink Line since 2012. Read some of his articles here.
Monthly Review
Every month, Mark writes a ‘Monthly Review’ essay in Business Day, about books and literature, art, film and performance.
Journalism on COVID-19
Read Mark’s journalism and commentary on the pandemic.
Recent Journalism
Mark publishes in a range of titles, including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian and Granta.
Other Books.
Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir
“Outstanding. A genuinely strange, marvelous, and complex account of a self and a city. Does for Johannesburg what Pamuk did for Istanbul. Gevisser is as intimate and sophisticated a guide as one would wish for to this great, troubled metropolis.”
- Teju Cole, author of Open City
“The most exciting book of nonfiction I've read in a very long time…”
- Garth Greenwell, Towleroad. Read more
Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred - Updated Edition
A 2022 update of the South African classic, originally published in 2007 and winner of the 2008 Alan Paton prize.
Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa
A pathbreaking 1994 publication, which Mark co-edited with Judge Edwin Cameron, Defiant Desire is now prescribed reading in queer studies courses the world over. Mark wrote the introductory historical essay.
Portraits of Power: Profiles in a Changing South Africa
In Portraits of Power, Mark Gevisser captures the moment of South Africa’s transition to majority rule in forty elegant, sharp and intimate profiles of people with power.
Under portrait: Photograph by Fiona McPherson
About Mark.
To research The Pink Line, Mark travelled to over twenty countries, with the help of an Open Society Fellowship. His journalism on the topic has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, and The New York Times. Mark’s other books include the prize-winning A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream, and Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir.
Mark is one of South Africa’s foremost writers. Among his current gigs is a review-essay column, The Monthly Review, in the South African Business Day. He is currently researching and writing about the COVID 19 pandemic, and the climate crisis, and continues to write about South African politics, culture and society. He lives outside Cape Town, South Africa, with his longterm partner and their two dogs, Porridge and Sugar.