The Wretched of the Earth

'This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism' – Angela Davis

'Have the courage to read this book' – Jean-Paul Sartre

'Fanon details the impact of colonialism on the psyches of black people. For the first time, I was able to understand empire as more than just an economic phenomenon. Reading it more than 50 years after publication was a visceral confrontation with a legacy that remains a shadow over black people' – Ore Ogunbiyi, Guardian

'This is not so much a book as a rock thrown through the window of the West. It is the Communist Manifesto of the anticolonial revolution, and as such it is highly important for any Western reader who wants to understand the emotional force behind that revolution' – Time

Frantz Fanon's book on the trauma of colonization made him the leading anti-colonialist thinker of the twentieth century. Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule and first published in 1961, it analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, makes clear the economic and psychological degradation inflicted by imperialism. Showing how decolonization must be combined with building a national culture, it continues to be one of the most important books on racism ever written.

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was born in Martinique and studied medicine in France, specializing in psychiatry. Sent to a hospital in Algeria, he found his sympathies turning towards the Algerian Nationalist Movement, which he later joined. He is considered one of the most important theorists of the psychology of race.