Oriana Fallaci (; 29 June 1929 – 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist and author. As a teenager she joined the Italian resistance movement during World War II, and later had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her "long, aggressive and revealing interviews" with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.Ian Fisher, "Oriana Fallaci, Incisive Italian Journalist, Is Dead at 77," The New York Times, 16 September 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2020. She received various prizes for her work as a journalist and later wrote a number of best selling books.
Fallaci's book Interview with History contains interviews with Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Willy Brandt, Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Ruhollah Khomeini, Henry Kissinger, South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, and North Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp during the Vietnam War. The interview with Kissinger was published in The New Republic. Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press".Cristina De Stefano, The Interview that Became Henry Kissinger's "Most Disastrous Decision": How Oriana Fallaci Became the Most Feared Political Interviewer in the World, lithub.com. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
She grew up during WWII in Italy and much of her career was focused on reporting from war zones, with the associated dangers. In 1968 Mexican soldiers shot her three times, and left her for dead. But she continued to go and report from zones of conflict. After retirement in New York, following the September 11th incidents in 2001, she wrote some articles and books critical of Islam that gained popular support but also led to accusations of Islamophobia.
Early life Fallaci was born in Florence, Italy, on 29 June 1929.The Guardian, most sources indicate Fallaci was born on 29 June, but some sources indicate 24 July 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. In 1944 he was arrested and tortured at the so called Villa Triste (the sad villa) in Florence.Piero Meucci, Giuseppe Fedi "Da grande farò la giornalista" Rizzoli 2026 ISBN 9788831821339 chapter 1
During World War II she joined the Italian anti-fascist resistance movement . At age 12 she became a clandestine carrier of both messages and munitions across the river Arno in Florence, given that all bridges (except Ponte vecchio) on the river had been destroyed by the Germans and a teenager was not seen as a suspect. She also assisted her father in helping people escape from the Nazis.Oriana Fallaci, Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa. L'apocalisse, Milano, BUR, 2014, ISBN 978-88-586-7338-6. She later received a certificate for valour from the Italian army.
Her views on power were formed during those early years, and in a 1976 retrospective collection of her works, she remarked:
And she felt that speaking against oppression and injustice was not a choice, but an obligation:The Rage and The Pride (2001). Editor Random House Incorporated, 2002 ISBN 0847825043, 9780847825042. p. 17.
Career Beginning as a journalist
After attaining her secondary school diploma, Fallaci briefly attended the University of Florence where she studied medicine and chemistry. She later transferred to literature but did not finish her studies. She began writing as a means of supporting herself during her studies, not expecting that it would become her lifelong endeavor. But her uncle Bruno Fallaci, himself a journalist, suggested that she should pursue a career in journalism.
She later became a special correspondent for the Italian paper in 1946. Beginning in 1967, she worked as a war correspondent covering the Vietnam War, the Indo-Pakistani War, the Middle East, and in South America.
1960s For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine , and wrote for a number of leading newspapers and the magazine .
In Mexico City, during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre following student demonstrations, Fallaci was shot three times by Mexican soldiers, twice in the back, dragged downstairs by her hair, and left for dead. She was driven to the morgue but unexpectedly regained consciousness. Her eyewitness account became important evidence disproving the Mexican government's denials that a massacre had taken place."The Agitator: Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam", Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 5 June 2006.
In the 1960s she began conducting interviews, first with people in the world of literature and cinema (published in book form in 1963 as ) and later with world leaders (published in the 1973 book ), which have led some to describe her as "during the 1970s and 80s the most famous – and feared – interviewer in the world".Caroline Moorehead, "Speak ill of everyone", The Times Literary Supplement, 22–29 December 2017. Retrieved 8 April 2020."Oriana Fallaci", The Times, 16 September 2006. Retrieved 8 April 2020.Sylvia Poggioli, "Fallaci Shed Light on the World's Leaders", National Public Radio. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
1970s In the early 1970s, Fallaci had a relationship with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who had been a solitary figure in the Greek resistance against the military dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. Panagoulis had been captured, heavily tortured and imprisoned for his unsuccessful assassination attempt on dictator and former Hellenic Army colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. Panagoulis died in 1976, under controversial circumstances, in a road accident. Fallaci maintained that Panagoulis' "accident" had been arranged by remnants of the Greek military junta despite the transition to a democracy, and her novel A Man was inspired by his life.
During her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger, she made him admit that the Vietnam War was a "useless war". He then compared himself to "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse".Fallaci, Oriana. Interview with History, p.40-41. Translated by John Shepley. 1976, Liveright Press. Kissinger later claimed that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press". In 1973, she interviewed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. She later stated, "He considers women simply as graceful ornaments, incapable of thinking like a man, and then strives to give them complete equality of rights and duties". After interviewing the Bangladeshi statesman Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she described him as "One of the most stupid men I've ever met in my life, maybe the most stupid".Oriana Fallaci: The Rolling Stone Interview, Rollingstone.com (June 17, 1976).
During her 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, she addressed him as a "tyrant", and managed to unveil herself from the chador:
1980s
In 1980 Fallaci interviewed Deng Xiaoping."Answers to the Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci: August 21 and 23, 1980" , People's Daily, people.cn. Retrieved 7 April 2020.Oriana Fallaci, "Deng: Cleaning up Mao's mistakes" , The Washington Post, 31 August 1980, online clipping at digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu. Retrieved 7 April 2020. Michael Rank described this interview as the "most revealing ever of any Chinese leader by any western journalist", during which Deng spoke about Mao "extraordinarily frankly by Chinese standards" whereas most Western interviews with Chinese leaders have been "bland and dull".Michael Rank, "Oriana Fallaci", The Guardian, 19 September 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
Retirement Living in New York City and in a house she owned in Tuscany, Fallaci lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University and Columbia University.
After 9/11 After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Fallaci wrote three books critical of Islamic extremists and Islam in general, and in both writing and interviews warned that Europe was "too tolerant of Muslims". The first book was The Rage and the Pride (initially a four-page article in Corriere della Sera, the major national newspaper in Italy). In this book, she calls for the destruction of what is now called Islam.
She wrote that the "sons of Allah breed like rats", and in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2005, she said that Europe was no longer Europe but "Eurabia". The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason both became bestsellers, the former selling over one million copies in Italy and 500,000 in the rest of Europe, and are considered part of the "Eurabia genre". Her third book in the same vein, ("The Apocalypse"), sold some two million copies globally, the three books together selling four million copies in Italy.
Personal views, relationships and death
As a teenager during WWII Fallaci supported the Italian resistance, and took pride in her physical courage despite her small stature. Cristina De Stefano wrote that, in Bangladesh, Fallaci separated from the other journalists and took a small boat to Dhaka and arrived alone to witness the dictator’s troops killing prisoners and burying them in common graves.Cristina De Stefano, Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend, New York: Other Press, 2017
Fallaci lived with Alexandros Panagoulis in Florence from 1973 until his death in 1976. Fallaci wrote A Man, a book inspired by his life and claimed that his death was not an accident but had been arranged.
Fallaci had stated that during her life she had only three friends who were women: Ingrid Bergman, Anna Magnani and Maria Callas, all of whom had initially sought her friendship. Fallaci had strong views about the mistreatment of women, and spoke out against the Taliban and the status of women in Afghanistan.Oriana Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride, Rizzoli 2001 ISBN 0-8478-2504-3
In The Force of Reason, she described herself as a "Christian atheist".Mark Steyn, "She Said What She Thought", The Atlantic, December 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2020. Fallaci was a vocal critic of Islam, especially after the Iranian Revolution and the September 11 attacks in 2001. When rumours of the construction of an Islamic centre in the city of Siena intensified, Fallaci told The New Yorker she would "blow it up with the help of her friends".
In 2005, she read an interview with Rino Fisichella in Corriere della Sera and contacted him. Over time they grew close and he introduced her to Pope Benedict XVI. He said that she had grown to doubt her atheism, but her strong character continued to question the authority of the Church. He was with her during her last days and arranged her funeral.
Fallaci died on 15 September 2006, in her native Florence, from cancer. She was buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in the southern suburb of Florence, Galluzzo, alongside her family members and a stone memorial dedicated to Panagoulis.Oriana non va più alla guerra, Il Giornale 17 Sept 2006
Legacy
Fallaci interviewed prominent figures such as Deng Xiaoping, Andreas Papandreou, Haile Selassie, Lech Wałęsa and Muammar Gaddafi.La Cina riscopre Deng attraverso Oriana Fallaci Corriere della Sera 26 August 2014
As of 2018, streets and squares have been renamed after her in Pisa, Arezzo, and Genoa. A public garden is dedicated to her in Sesto San Giovanni, an industrial town close to Milan.
In July 2019, the lower chamber of the Italian Parliament approved the creation of low-denomination treasury bills that could also be used as a de facto parallel currency to the euro. According to the plan's main proponent, the League's MP Claudio Borghi, the 20-euro bill should bear a picture of Fallaci.
An Italian television series was created about her life, titled Miss Fallaci (2024).