Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci (29 June 1929 - 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A young partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career.

She has interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Willy Brandt, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Omar Khadafi, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr, Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyen Van Thieu, Haile Selassie and Sean Connery.

After retirement, she returned to writing a series of articles and books critical of Islam and Arabs and some people interpreted the articles under the guise of racism and so-called Islamophobia.

Life and career

Fallaci was born in Florence, Italy. During World War II, she joined the resistance in the democratic armed group "Giustizia e Libertà". Her father Edoardo Fallaci, was a famous antifascist political activist, in Florence.

Fallaci began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for the Italian paper Il mattino dell'Italia centrale in 1946. After 1967 she worked as a war correspondent, in Vietnam, for the Indo-Pakistani War, in the Middle East and in South America. For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine L'Europeo and wrote for a number of leading newspapers and Epoca magazine. During the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics, Fallaci was shot three times, dragged down stairs by her hair, and left for dead by Mexican forces. The demonstrations by immigrants in the United States these past few months "disgust" her, especially when protesters displayed the Mexican flag. "I don't love the Mexicans," Fallaci said, invoking her nasty treatment at the hands of Mexican police in 1968. "If you hold a gun and say, 'Choose who is worse between the Muslims and the Mexicans,' I have a moment of hesitation. Then I choose the Muslims, because they have broken my balls."

In the late 1970s, she had an affair with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who was a big rebel in the Greek resistance against the 1967 dictatorship, having been captured, heavily tortured and imprisoned for his (unsuccessful) assassination attempt against dictator and ex-Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. In 1972 she interviewed Henry Kissinger.

Fallaci has twice received the St. Vincent Prize for journalism, as well as the Bancarella Prize (1971) for Nothing, and So Be It; Viareggio Prize (1979), for Un uomo: Romanzo; and Prix Antibes, 1993, for Inshallah. She received a D.Litt. from Columbia College (Chicago). She has lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University, and Columbia University. Fallaci’s writings have been translated into 21 languages including English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Greek, Swedish, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian and Slovenian.

Fallaci, smoked always during her life, died on 15 September 2006 where she was born, in Florence, from lung cancer.

Bibliography

• The Seven Sins of Hollywood 1958.
• The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman 1961.
• Penelope at War 1962.
• Limelighters 1963.
• The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews 1968.
• Quel giorno sulla Luna 1970.
• Interview With History, (a collection of interviews with various political figures) 1976.
• A Man, a novel about a hero who fights alone for freedom and for truth, never giving up, and so he dies, killed by all. 1979
• Inshallah,1983.
• If the Sun Dies, (about the US space program).
• Letter to a Child Never Born, (a dialogue between a mother and her unborn child).
• Nothing, and so be it, report on the Vietnam war based on personal experiences.
• The Rage and The Pride (An expose on Islam) December 2001..
• The Force of Reason (La Forza della Ragione ) April 2004.
• Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, Fallaci interviews herself on the subject of "Eurabia" and "Islamofacism".August 2004.
• Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa - L'Apocalisse. An update of the interview with herself. November 2004.