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Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (review)

of place evinced by the various writers of French extraction, what Graebner calls their “broken idylls.” The idea of the Mediterranean as the projection of a historical vista serving at the same time as existential reference illustrates this connection vividly. Graebner provides an account of the efforts to appropriate this idea by writers and activists both of the right and of the left, and the sharp dissonances in their discourses that these efforts produced. That this idea is not a mere trope of the literary imagination is evidenced by its persistence and strong affective appeal, for it has not only served as the informing principle of the historical method of the Annales school, led by Ferdinand Braudel, but is today being canvassed anew by President Sarkhozy for the benefit of a regional project. Graebner’s study is an innovative work, elaborated with a remarkable care for detail that still preserves the sense of an overarching structure of feelings and ideas that adhere to the movement of history. Not the least of its qualities is the clarity of its critical formulations, placed constantly at the service of an impressive breadth of coverage and analytical insight.