Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who fought for Free France, trained in Lyon, took charge of a hospital in Algeria in 1953, and joined the FLN in the war against French rule, treating the tortured and the torturers alike. Black Skin, White Masks analysed the psychology of colonial racism; The Wretched of the Earth, dictated as he was dying of leukaemia at thirty-six and published with Sartre’s preface in 1961, argues that decolonisation is necessarily violent and that the new nations must avoid the trap of a national bourgeoisie. It became the handbook of liberation movements everywhere.