Revolutionaries

In July, a few days after the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, I had lunch with his daughter, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France. When I commented that Fanon had died so young, at thirty-nine, Mireille corrected me: ‘No, thirty-six’. Even three more years would have been a gift – to him because he might have been able to finish other work and spend more time with his family, and to us because we might have gotten the book that would have come after The Wretched of the Earth – perhaps one on how to construct a national project that would not succumb to the pitfalls of narrow nationalism. But that was not to be. Thinking of my conversation with Mireille and the legacy her father left behind, I asked the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research team to help me make a list of revolutionary leaders and intellectuals who died before their fortieth birthday.