JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge

Frantz Fanon
by James S Williams, Reaktion Books £12.99
FRANTZ FANON (1925-1961) was a phenomenon, as this new biography sets out to explain.
In his short life (cut off by leukaemia at the age of 36) Fanon had been a soldier, fighting fascism in the second world war, a militant in North Africa during the Algerian war of Independence (1954-1962), an innovative psychiatrist, an ambassador, a journalist, a pan-Africanist internationalist and one of the most influential thinkers on anti-colonialism of his time.
Growing up in colonial Martinique, Fanon imbibed the assumption that French education would enable black students from the colonies, like himself, to become assimilated – and to think of themselves as being culturally white. He was only to discover the reality of racism when he reached France and experienced this for himself.

These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO


