The Fifth Year of the Algerian Revolution

The Fifth Year of the Algerian Revolution, published in 1959 by Maspero, is an essay written by Frantz Fanon while he was chief physician at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in Algeria. The work analyzes, from a clinical observation standpoint, the role of rural masses in the Algerian War of Liberation.

Fanon describes there how the anticolonial struggle transforms alienated Algerian peasants into revolutionary subjects. The book is also a clinical testimony of the psychic violence of colonialism and its effects on Algerian patients.

The text was translated into English under the title A Dying Colonialism (1965) and is often associated with the work Sociology of a Revolution (Maspero, 1972), which brings together this text and broader analyses on decolonization.

Sources

• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon#%C5%92uvres
• Open Library data: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1323770W