Patrick Ehlen resurrects the tremendous personality of Fanon and presents his remarkable life with the skill of a fine novelist. The book opens on the small French Caribbean colony of Martinique at the turn of the century, and recounts the trials of an ordinary family in extraordinary times, subtly fusing the social, economic, and psychological elements that fed young Frantz Fanon's intellect and passion. Scant details of Fanon's childhood have ever been published, and interviews with family members help to provide this book with a rich and unprecedented account of the development of Fanon's powerful personality. Fanon's early years illuminate the uncommon life that follows, revealing how a single man matures into a decorated hero of war, a revolutionary pioneer in psychiatry, a radical theorist in philosophy, and a passionate revolutionary in one of the bloodiest anticolonial struggles of modern times, the Algerian war of independence. Supported and understood by few save his family, a few life-long friends, and Simon de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Fanon aims for the impossible and achieves the improbable. Frantz Fanon is the story of a family, the story of an island, and the story of love, disappointment and loss and offers a lucid view of Fanon's theories through the narrative of his life.