One of
The New York Times
's 100 Notable Books of 2024
One of the
Washington Post
's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Named a best book of 2024 by
The New Yorker
|
Vulture
Los Angeles Review of Books
Foreign Affairs
The New Republic
Longlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
“Nimble and engrossing . . . [An] exemplary work of public intellectualism.” —Becca Rothfeld,
The Washington Post
"Undoubtedly the best [biography of Fanon] . . . A remarkable achievement." —Robert J. C. Young,
A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today’s movements for social and racial justice.
In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon’s shadow looms larger than ever. He was
the
intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War–era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of “dis-alienation” in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital.
Today, Fanon’s
Black Skin, White Masks
and
The Wretched of the Earth
have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin’s essays in their influence. And yet they are little understood. In
The Rebel’s Clinic
, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.
Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs