Every collector of modern books knows this terrible and delightful phrase. An ominous prelude announcing just how arduous the quest for the most desirable copy will be.

There is no complicity more powerful, nor more discreet, than that of a gaze cast across the shelves of a library. Presentation inscriptions, bookplates, armorial bindings, provenances: step inside illustrious libraries and share the intellectual intimacy of artists, scholars, writers, and the great figures of history and culture.

Seventy-five years after Rimbaud proclaimed the strangeness of the self, Frantz Fanon was confronted with his own foreignness. Steeped in the beliefs instilled by his upbringing, the Martinican born writer had considered himself 'white' before arriving in metropolitan France. He was then suddenly thrust into a body shaped by his own prejudices. The 'I' is no longer merely an other; the Other has become an 'I'.