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David Macey. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. New York: Picador USA, 2001. xvi + 640 pp. Ill. $40.00 (0-312-27550-1).
Frantz Fanon-psychiatrist and voice of the Algerian revolution-has long been a difficult subject for biographers. Disturbed by his advocacy of violence as a legitimate tactic of national liberation, scholars have focused on his reputation as a psychiatric reformer and a crusader against the endemic racism of French colonial medicine. Yet in describing him as a new incarnation of Philippe Pinel in the colonies, many have strained credulity by portraying him as a mythic figure. David Macey's exceptional study provides an important corrective. Following Fanon from his 1925 birth in Martinique, through his medical education in France and his practice as a psychiatrist in Algeria, to his exile in Tunisia and death from leukemia in 1961, Macey presents the histories of multiple Fanons-writer, psychiatrist, and revolutionary-by situating them in elaborate historical contexts. The result is a book that tells not only Fanon's story, but also those of a Martinique...