Frantz Fanon has established a position as a leading anticolonial thinker, through key texts such as Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. He has influenced the work of thinkers from Edward Said and Homi Bhabha to Paul Gilroy, but his complex work is often misinterpreted as an apology for violence.

This clear, student-friendly guidebook considers Fanon's key texts and theories, looking at:

• Postcolonial theory's appropriation of psychoanalysis
• Anxieties around cultural nationalisms and the rise of native consciousness
• Postcoloniality's relationship with violence and separatism
• New humanism and ideas of community.

Introducing the work of this controversial theorist, Pramod K. Nayar also offers alternative readings, charting Fanon's influence on postcolonial studies, literary criticism and cultural studies.