Wretched Of the Earth (Paperback)

Although socialism has seemingly collapsed in the years since Fanon's work was first published, there is much in his look into the political, racial, and social psyche of the ever-emerging Third World that still rings true at the cusp of a new century. --Eugene Holley, Jr. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Writing in the name of an ideal Third World unity yet to be forged, Fanon has here provided for leaders in under-developed countries a veritable handbook of revolutionary practice and social reorganization. He warns the Third World-and us against dangerous forms of alienation that lie in wait for newly liberated peoples: the perilous cult of the leader, untimely pseudo-nationalism, the nostalgic desire to return to an earlier tribal stage of culture. And from his own practice as a psychiatrist in Algeria during her struggle for independence he presents case histories of what he calls the "colonial neurosis." Fanon impresses upon his African brothers, finally, the necessity of inventing-for themselves and for humanity-new ways of thought, new forms of social leadership, and a new image of man.

To read Fanon is to read the passionate revolutionary bible of a latter-day Machiavelli, urging us all to bring the colonial period of world history to an end by all possible means, including violence. As Jean-Paul Sartre points out in his now-famous preface to this book, we must have the courage to read this speaker for the Third World, for he will make us ashamed, and shame is itself a revolutionary sentiment.

"Have the courage to read this book."--Jean-Paul Sartre

"It must be read by all who wish to understand what it means to fight for freedom, equality and dignity."--Alex Quaison-Sackey, former president of the United Nations General Assembly

"The value of The Wretched of the Earth lie[s] in its relation to direct experience, in the perspective of the Algerian revolution.... Fanon forces his readers to see the Algerian revolution--and by analogy other contemporary revolutions--from the viewpoint of the rebels."--The Nation

"This is not so much a book as a rock thrown through the windows of the West. It is the Communist Manifesto or the Mein Kampf of the anticolonial revolution, and as such it is highly important for any reader who wants to understand the emotional force behind that revolution."--Time

"The Wretched of the Earth is an explosion. Readers owe it to their education to study the whole of it."--Emile Capouya, Saturday Review

Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, on the island of Martinique. He studied medicine in France, and later specialized in psychiatry. When he was twenty-seven, he published his first book, a remarkable personal narrative of his life as a black man in a white world, entitled Peau Noire Masques Blancs (Black Skin White, Masks), published in 1967 by Grove Press.

During the French-Algerian war, Fanon was assigned to a hospital in Algeria, and soon found his sympathies with the lot of the rebels. He subsequently joined the revolution and became one its most articulate spokesmen. Out of that experience came two further works, L'An V de la Revolution Algerienne (Year V of the Algerian Rev --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.