Books by Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was a French psychiatrist and political philosopher, born on the island of Martinique. For a biography of Fanon, there’s The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz, shortlisted for the 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. Books by Frantz Fanon recommended on Five Books are listed below.
“He spent his life in Algeria, with the exception of the time he was fighting the Nazis in France. He was a doctor and a psychiatrist, and he wrote about what the colonial system inflicts psychologically on the indigenous. He joined the independence movement in Algeria very early on. His book, The Wretched of the Earth, is extraordinarily important because he’s talking about the necessity of violence to assert one’s dignity after being humiliated for so long. He then raises the question of what we do with that violence. Do we consume ourselves with it? And eventually he acknowledges that that is not a viable option. It is perhaps a transition to assert oneself after being silenced for so long, but eventually one has to overcome that violence.” Read more...
Xavier Le Clerc, Novelist
“I love A Dying Colonialism. It is, for me, the coolest book because it really attaches all these big abstract theoretical philosophical movements that he was undertaking in the other two books to practices on the ground in the everyday of the Algerian revolution.” Read more...
The Best Postcolonial Literature
Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, Literary Scholar
“Fanon was particularly interested in the psychiatric problems you could face if you were a victim of racism, particularly of anti-black racism in France.” Read more...
Underrated Existentialist Classics
Jonathan Webber, Philosopher
Interviews where books by Frantz Fanon were recommended
Underrated Existentialist Classics, recommended by Jonathan Webber
As questions of identity become a focus of political debate, interest in existentialism has been booming once more. Here, the philosopher Jonathan Webber discusses five classic books dealing with existentialist themes that deserve a bigger audience.
The best books on Racism, recommended by Kurt Barling
The concept of ‘race’ is misleading and inaccurate, argues Kurt Barling, Professor of Journalism at the University of Middlesex and author of The R Word: Racism and Modern Society. He recommends the best books to think about racism.
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1
Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
by Aimé Césaire -
2
A Dying Colonialism
by Frantz Fanon -
3
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
by Maryse Condé -
4
Maps: A Novel
by Nuruddin Farah -
5
Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea
ed. Rosalind Morris, original essay by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
The Best Postcolonial Literature, recommended by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb
The Best Postcolonial Literature, recommended by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb
Postcolonial literature brings together writings from formerly colonised territories, allowing commonalities across disparate cultures to be identified and examined. Here, the University of Toronto academic Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb recommends five key works that explore philosophical and political questions through allegory, personal reflection and powerful polemic.
The best books on Algeria, recommended by Xavier Le Clerc
In his book, A Man With No Title, Xavier Le Clerc tells the story of his father, who was born in extreme poverty in the mountains of Algeria and emigrated to France to give his children a better life. Here he recommends books by some of Algeria’s greatest writers—and explains how they shed light on his father’s life and Algeria’s experience of French colonialism.
