THE REBEL’S CLINIC: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, by Adam ShatzRhetoric that is polemical, that is caustic, that is ruthlessly extreme is potent in one sense yet vulnerable in another. It seizes attention and attracts acolytes; it is memorable and therefore memeable. Writers who deploy it are susceptible to being cherry-picked and caricatured. I kept thinking about this paradox while reading “The Rebel’s Clinic,” Adam Shatz’s absorbing new biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon. He was both a militant and a doctor, someone who promoted a “belief in violence” while also practicing a “commitment to healing.” An acquaintance recalls being struck by Fanon’s compassion: “He treated the torturers by day and the tortured at night.”

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Persons: Frantz Fanon, Adam Shatz, ” Adam Shatz’s, Fanon, ” Organizations: Rebel’s Clinic Locations: syllabuses, French, Martinique, Bethesda, Md, lynchers, ”, France, Algeria