Who were the most popular authors in Fanon's library?

Marx, Sartre, Césaire—these are obvious influences for Frantz Fanon’s work and thought. They appear as essential references in his works, especially in Peau noire, masques blancs, which was an academic study with significant quotation and citation. But what can the library reveal about potential connections between Frantz Fanon and other authors? Fanon, after all, virtually stops quoting and citing academic thinkers in his other works. How can his library help us understand the more elliptical influences in his thought?

Let us take a look at the graph. The graph shows the top authors around the median year of publication of their works (not the total count of books per author).

If we choose Fanon’s year of death, 1961, as the cutoff date of Fanon’s influences, we will start to see an interesting set of references. Indeed, Fanon’s library contains several books from Marx (11) and Sartre (6). Interestingly, the only book in the collection by Césaire is Les armes miraculeuses. Césaire’s influence on Fanon, then, is perhaps limited to an earlier time in his life (and, of course, his criticism of Césaire and Négritude writers in general is well known).

What is most stunning is the collection of works by Mao (marked as Tse-Tung, which reflects how his name was marked at the time). There is very little scholarship comparing Mao and Fanon (see here, for instance). What would Fanonian scholarship look like if we seriously consider that Fanon, possibly, read Mao’s works before his death?

This is also true for other thinkers such as Lenin, who is a popular author in the library collection, but remains less compared with Fanon. For reference, see the top fifteen authors in Fanon’s library below. Note that this is Josie and Frantz Fanon’s library, so someone like Kim Il-sung was someone Josie would have read, not Frantz.

#	Last Name	Count
1	Tse-tung	70
2	Fanon	32
3	Marx	11
4	Lénine	11
5	Char	10
6	Il Sung	9
7	Castro	8
8	Hoxha	8
9	Che Guevara	7
10	Guillaume	7
11	Dib	7
12	Sartre	6
13	Hegel	6
14	Freud	5
15	Nguyen	5