Michela Wrong

The fresh, forceful voice of Frantz Fanon

The Marxist from Martinique became a rallying figure for anti-colonial movements across the world. But might he have revised his violent message had he lived longer?

Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist, philosopher and icon to leftist revolutionaries. [Alamy] 
issue 09 March 2024

‘If I’d died in my thirties, what would be left behind?’ is the question that keeps coming to mind reading this timely new biography of Frantz Fanon, the psychiatrist and philosopher who became an icon to leftist revolutionaries across the globe. ‘Would I want history to judge me by what I wrote at 36?’ For that was the absurdly young age at which Fanon died of leukaemia in 1961, leaving two key works to his name: Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.

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