The Rebel's Clinic

The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

By: Adam Shatz

Narrated by: Terrence Kidd

In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of "dis-alienation" in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital.

Today, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin's essays in their influence. In The Rebel's Clinic, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon's extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today's most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.

©2024 Adam Shatz (P)2024 Tantor

Best Fanon Biography

Easily the best Fanon Biography Written in the Neo-liberal Era. Well worth the time for a high quality interpretation of Fanon's life and the implications of his philosophy on the postcolonial/ neoliberal era.

Thrilling story

Beautifully explained narrative of an unusual man who went from Martinique to Algeria and was brilliant

Brilliant book, unbearable narration

As a French speaker, listening to the narration of this book was so painful as to force me to put it down, despite my great interest in its subject matter. It is one thing for an English speaker to pronounce French words with an English accent; it is another thing altogether for an English speaker to fail to use even the standard English pronunciation of French words. These pronunciation issues are not limited to words of foreign derivation; the narrator trips over the pronunciation of plenty of English words as well. Overall, the cadence and articulation of the narration are so unnatural and stuffy as to hinder the listener’s understanding. Adam Shatz is a brilliant writer and cultural critic, and the narrator’s performance is a shameful disservice to his work.

Read, don’t listen

The narrator, who is the author, is the worst I’ve heard. There are so many words and phrases in the book in French and his accent is so bad that he completely mangles the words so badly as to make them unintelligible. In addition, he has no feel at all for how to read aloud. Words are run together without emphasis or rhythm or, in spite of the fact that he’s the author, you would think he has no understanding of what he’s reading. It’s an important book, but don’t listen to this narration. It will ruin the book..