Fanon

by John Edgar Wideman

A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Algeria’s war for independence. His last book, The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, inspired leaders of diverse liberation movements: Steve Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the Black Panthers in the States.
Wideman’s novel is disguised as the project of a contemporary African American novelist, Thomas, who undertakes writing a life of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay, part love story, Fanon introduces the French film director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon’s legacy through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to rectify.

John Edgar Wideman was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team, and studied philosophy as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, among other universities. He is the first writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award.