How to get around South Africa’s many boundaries

There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken by the hand and is being gently led down a path by a guide who can be trusted to point out interesting landmarks, allow the odd meander, but always keep firmly on course.

Mark Gevisser, who published a praised biography of former South African president Thabo Mbeki a few years ago, is one such, and the metaphor seems apt in view of this book’s title, which comes from a game the author played in childhood.

Perched on the back seat of his father’s Mercedes, he would pore over a map of Johannesburg, sending imaginary emissaries out into the city and trying to ferry them home. Too often, the boy found, the journeys had to be aborted: the dots could not be made to join up, adjoining districts of this goldrush city did not seem to connect.