IN THE SUMMER OF 1959, the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon sent off an outline of L’An V de la révolution algérienne, a sweeping analysis of the French occupation of Algeria, to his publisher and received a probing reply: “Are you sure that everything will still be valid in six months’ time? Is the text still timely? I cannot hide from you my personal doubts about this.”
The Algerian Revolution had broken out on November 1 five years…