Oriana Fallaci

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Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci (born July 29 1930) is an Italian journalist and author. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of articles and books highly critical of Islam that aroused substantial controversy.

Career

Fallaci was born in Florence, Italy. During World War II, she joined the resistance despite her youth, in the democratic armed group "Giustizia e Libertà".

Her father Edoardo Fallaci, a cabinet maker in Florence, was a political activist struggling to put an end to the dictatorship of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. It was during this period that Fallaci was first exposed to the atrocities of war.

Fallaci began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for the Italian paper Il mattino dell'Italia centrale in 1950.

Since 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.

She has interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as 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, Yasir Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyen Van Thieu, Haile Selassie and Sean Connery. In the late 1970s, she had an affair with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who had been a solitary figure 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. Panagoulis died in 1976, under controversial circumstances, in a road accident. Fallaci maintained that Panagoulis was assassinated by remnants of the Greek military junta and her book (see below) Un Uomo (A Man) was inspired by the life of Panagoulis.

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 and Slovenian.

Controversy

In recent years, she has received much public attention for her controversial critique of contemporary Islam. She was highly criticized by Muslim organizations and left-wing parties alike, particularly in France.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, she took a strong stance critical of Islam. This point of view was expressed in two books, The Rage and The Pride (initially a four-page article in Corriere della Sera, the major national newspaper in Italy) and The Force of Reason.

Another well-known journalist from Florence, Tiziano Terzani, expressed disagreements with her approach in an open letter to her in Corriere della Sera.

Muslim response to her books

In 2003 the Union of Italian Muslims sued to have The Rage and The Pride banned in France. A French court rejected the request, as well as the group's request for a disclaimer to be placed in each book.

In May, 2005, Adel Smith, the President of the Union of Italian Muslims, launched a lawsuit against Fallaci charging that "some of the things she said in her book The Force of Reason are offensive to Islam." Smith's attorney, Matteo Nicoli, cited a phrase from the book that refers to Islam as "a pool that never purifies." Consequently an Italian judge ordered her to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam." A previous prosecutor had sought dismissal of the charges.

In an ironic twist, on June 14, 2005 Adel Smith himself was sentenced by an Italian court in Padua to six months in prison (commuted to a fine of € 6.000), for the crime of defaming religion. On January 4, 2003, during a live broadcast on Italian TV, Smith had characterized Christianity as a "criminal association" and described Pope John Paul II as "a foreigner who leads the church ... a con man".

On August 27, 2005, Fallaci had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo.

Books by Oriana Fallaci

  • A Man, a novel about about a hero who fights alone for freedom and for truth, never giving up, and so he dies, killed by all. (1979) ISBN 8427938543
  • The Seven Sins of Hollywood preface by Orson Welles, Longanesi (Milan), 1958.
  • The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman Horizon Press (New York City), 1961.
  • Penelope at War 1962 (London).
  • Limelighters 1963.
  • The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews Regnery (Chicago), 1963.
  • Quel giorno sulla Luna Rizzoli, 1970.
  • Inshallah, a fictional account of Italian troops stationed in Lebanon in 1983.
  • If the Sun Dies, about the US space program.
  • Interview With History, a collection of interviews with various political figures Liveright, 1976.
  • 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.
  • Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, Fallaci interviews herself on the subject of "Eurabia" and "Islamofacism". (Milan: Corriere della Sera, August 2004).
  • The Rage and The Pride An expose on Islam. Original title La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio, Publisher: Rizzoli, December 2001. ISBN 0847825043.
  • The Force of Reason (La Forza della Ragione) Publisher: Rizzoli, April 2004. ISBN 0847827534
  • Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa - L'Apocalisse (in Italian). An update of the interview with herself. A new, long epilogue is added. Publisher: Rizzoli, November 2004.

Fallaci has also written essays and novels revolving around news events.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Oriana Fallaci.

Online articles and translations

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