Inspired by The Rebel Clinic, Adam Schatz’s new work on Frantz Fanon, journalist Robert Dreyfus recalls an early visit to Algeria and discusses some of the titles he picked up, including Schatz’s influential book, to gain a deeper understanding of one of the central and most brutal narratives of modern colonialism.
Five decades ago, I spent a few weeks hitchhiking and travelling by train from west to east across Algeria. The bloody revolution that liberated the country from French rule was still a fresh memory for the people I met. They still remembered the struggle against occupation in the hills outside Algiers and Constantine. The country seemed alive and buzzing with energy.
This visit has stayed with me all these years, and when I heard that Adam Shatz, a writer with whom I had worked in The NationAfter writing a new biography of Frantz Fanon, the scholarly activist and psychiatrist deeply involved with the FLN during the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), I decided to delve into Algerian history and literature. It’s worth it; each of these books is a great read, and if you’re not well-versed on Algeria, you’ve taken a journey through an important chapter of modern colonial history.
I started with a classic: Alistair Horne’s A cruel war of peace (1977), a brilliant and comprehensive history of the revolution, from its earliest roots to the, yes, gruesome battles in which the FLN guerrillas fought against a brutal French occupation that tortured, murdered, and disappeared countless thousands of fighters and civilians. A million or more Algerians died, and millions more were deported to concentration camps before Charles de Gaulle carefully began to pull France out of the war. Not only does Horne describe the revolution’s turbulent rise and ultimate success in exquisite detail, but he also offers a detailed look at the ways in which ultra-right settlers and their allies in the occupying French army fiercely opposed de Gaulle’s willingness to accept Algerian independence. The leaders of this movement, often based in Generalissimo Franco’s Madrid, attempted to assassinate or overthrow de Gaulle on numerous occasions, raising the specter of a military coup. Horne’s epic is highly recommended.
Then I made a detour into two masterpieces of fiction and The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) by Albert Camus, born black Parents in Oran, Algeria, in 1913. Camus, who was by turns a communist, existentialist and absurdist, was disturbed by the poverty of most Algerians, found their hardship oppressive and unbearable, and as a journalist often wrote sympathetically about their struggles. During the revolution he wrote a number of peace proposals, but in the end could not bring himself to support full independence. Edward Said, author of Culture and Imperialism And Orientalismaccuses Camus of having a “colonial instinct”. Perhaps this is the reason why Camus’ two novels almost ignore the Arabs and Berbers who made up the majority of the country’s population during the occupation. In The Strangerfamously about a random and almost casual murder of an Arab by Meursault, a dour French settler, the native population is practically not mentioned in the novella, with the exception of the victim – whose name is not even mentioned. And in The Plagueabout the (fictionalized) outbreak of bubonic plague in Oran that kills thousands, the reader is hard-pressed to find a single mention of an Arab in the entire book, even though the vast majority of those who died from the plague must be Arabs and Berbers. It is a tragic omission in the career of one of France’s literary titans, who died in a car crash in 1960, two years before the rebels managed to bring freedom to Algeria. For me, the proximity of the Covid crisis The Plague an even more frightening read.
Before I started Shatz’s book, I turned to The Meursault investigationa clever sequel to The Strangerwritten in 2014 by Kamel Daoud, an Algerian journalist who turns the tables. Daoud’s award-winning novel, as short as Camus’s, is the story of the same murder, written from the perspective of the victim’s brother, Harun, who in this book has a name: Musa. “There is something that baffles me,” writes Daoud, “and that is that no one – not even after independence – no one at all ever tried to find out what the victim was called, where he lived, what family he came from, or whether he had children.” Read The Stranger And The Meursault investigation The successive journeys – easily accomplished in a few days – sum up Algeria’s struggle for self-discovery since World War II and the revolution.
Finally The Rebel Clinic: The Revolutionary Life of Frantz FanonShatz takes us through the fascinating life of Fanon. Best known for Black skin, white masks And The damned of this earthBorn in Martinique, Fanon traveled throughout France, Algeria, and much of Africa as he sought to define and explain race, racism, black identity, white supremacy, colonialism, and the use and abuse of revolutionary violence. After first coming into contact with Algerians in France while treating them for mental health problems, Fanon, Shatz tells it, developed strong sympathies for the rebels and took over a psychiatric clinic in a town south of Algiers, where he secretly collaborated with the FLN.
Shatz is a compelling writer, and in a few hundred pages he manages to weave together not only Fanon’s life and legacy, but also (his own) deep insights into colonialism, racism, and psychology. He paints a nuanced portrait of a man attempting to convey his evolving understanding of both blackness and the global anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement through the lens of psychiatry, philosophy, and “lived experience” simultaneously. His book is highly recommended as a tour de force not only for Fanon himself, but also for the range of philosophers, social scientists, writers, and politicians who have shaped Fanon’s thought over decades, and he tackles this saga with rigor and intellectual discipline.
Like Camus, Fanon died an early death in 1960. However, he was an inspiration to the decolonization and national liberation movements of the time and later gained widespread popularity in the United States and elsewhere. Shatz’s book is a compelling read and a worthy addition to the famous titles mentioned in this list.
Bob Dreyfuss is an award-winning investigative journalist living in northern New Jersey.
