Oriana Fallaci preferred to be called a writer, not a writer. Perhaps for that need to reiterate that her being a woman, writer, journalist, intellectual did not depend on that declination in "a" that distinguished her as a female. It was a woman, full stop. Writer, journalist, intellectual, there was no need to indicate any gender difference because she was probably convinced that it was not the gender difference that made the difference.

Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci thought so, and this conviction speaks volumes about her temperament. Fiorentina doc, despite not exactly pure for family origins. “Florentine I speak, Florentine I think, Florentine I feel - this is how Fallaci used to tell her European readers - Fiorentina is my culture and my education. Abroad, when they ask me which country I belong to, I answer: Florence. Not: Italy ".

Like a woodworm stuck in the wood of history: interviews with the greats of the Earth

Writing will be her life, or her life will be writing, since she was very young following in the footsteps of an uncle and approaching journalism. It starts from the ranks: judicial, custom, local news and a lot of "cooking" work in the editorial office. Then from Florence he moves to Rome to the European Championship directed by Arrigo Benedetti and here he builds the foundations of his extraordinary career. He moves to Milan and begins to travel. The first are born reportage around the world and his great interviews which will reveal its volcanic and in some ways transgressive character. An uncomfortable but above all courageous journalist. Like when, at the end of the interview with Ayatollah Khomeini on September 26, 1979, she takes off the chador ("a stupid rag from the Middle Ages") that she was forced to wear to be admitted to the presence of the Iranian leader.

Fallaci and Khomeini

Among the many stages of this exceptional professional path, Oriana Fallaci follows the race for the moon as sent, she is a war correspondent in Vietnam where she voluntarily goes following the most ferocious fights on the front line. Interview the greatest leaders on earth. From Ali Bhutto to Haile Selassie, to General Giap. Women who have made history like Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir. The Shah of Persia Reza Pahlavi and the President of the Palestinian National Authority Yassir Arafat, the Secretary of State of the United States Henry Kissinger, King Hussein of Jordan… These are interviews in which Fallaci tries "to listen and understand how a woodworm stuck in wood of history".

Journalism, a compromise to get to literature

Not just journalism. Because, it is Fallaci herself who writes it, "for me it was a compromise, a means to get to literature". In 1962 his first novel came out Penelope to war, where through the story of a love triangle she claims the role of women in society and the need for her emancipation. In the seventies he lives and tells all the main international events. And it is in this period that he interviews one of the exponents of the Greek resistance to the regime of the colonels, Alekos Panagulis.

oriana Fallaci

The result is a great, and tormented, love story that will end only with the death of Panagulis in 1976. This experience will lead to two books that will leave a fundamental mark in the history of literature. Letter to a child never born (1975) recounts the dramatic experience of a missed motherhood. A man (1979) is dedicated to the life of Panagulis and his tragic end. Translated and published all over the world, these two works bring Oriana Fallaci to worldwide success.

Anger and pride against Islamic terrorism

In a framework of global consensus, it is above all the United States that elevates his writings and loves his literature. In 1997 he received an honorary degree in literature from Columbia College in Chicago. In American universities the readings of Fallaci are increasingly in demand. A reciprocated love. Oriana Fallaci spends more and more time in her New York retreat which becomes her new home. Here, in 1990 it comes out Inshallah, dedicated to the conflict in Lebanon. Then the project of a book to tell his family story. And then again, in 2001, the attack against the Twin Towers. After a long silence, Oriana Fallaci feels the urgent need to take a stand by telling the tragedy of the Twin Towers.

anger and pride

Anger and pride is the title of a long article published in Corriere della Sera and which then becomes - published by Rizzoli - "the little book" where the writer analyzes the problems of the clash between Western civilization and Islam, pointing out the impossibility of a peaceful coexistence. Anger and Pride becomes the number one best seller in all the countries where it is published. In the same vein and the same themes it comes out in 2004 The power of reason.

A hat full of cherries and the need to tell its roots

In 2005, a year before his death, Oriana Fallaci receives the gold medal of "merit of culture" from the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. In 2006 she died in her Florence struck down by a serious illness that she herself had defined as the "Alien". The "Child" was instead the name he had given to the story of his family, a great saga he worked on for fifteen years. Is titled A hat full of cherries, and came out posthumously in 2008. “A very difficult child - wrote Fallaci in 2001 -… whose birth began thanks to the disease that will kill me and whose first cry will be heard I don't know when. Maybe when I'm dead ”.

Oriana Fallaci, between journalism and literature last edit: 2021-04-01T10:25:40+02:00 da Cristina Campolonghi

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