Fanon's incredible and unapologetic assessment of colonialism, African nationalism, and the cultures therein.

This text is worth reading for the last section ('Colonial War and Mental Disorders') alone - it's a truly astonishing, jarring sequence of notes from his time as a psychotherapist during the Algerian revolution. It's been a long time since I felt something so visceral & human delivered in an entirely passive tone. In fact, I found myself sinking into the misbelief that these haunting narratives are fiction, until reminded that Fanon himself experienced and met these individuals.

If it wasn't clear thus far, it's not a cheerful read. An essential one, nonetheless.

Something that struck me as new about the style of this book as a whole was Fanon's refusal to assume a European audience. It's an interesting thing to realise - he never draws attention to this perspective, but I found it instructive as an emphasis for his notes on producing 'de-colonialised culture' and the necessity of artistic reinvention within African independent and colonial states.

I found myself highlighting every other sentence in chapter one.