Italian writer Oriana Fallaci died in Florence, Italy, after a long battle against cancer. She had lived in New York but returned to Italy recently. Fallaci was known for her interviews with Henry Kissinger -- she got him to say that he fancied himself a cowboy and to call the Vietnam War "useless" -- and with other world leaders including the Ayatollah Khomeini, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Willy Brandt, Walter Cronkite, the Shah of Iran, Golda Meir, Mu'ammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, Deng Xiaoping, General Giap, and Yasser Arafat.
A member of the Italian Resistance during World War II, Oriana Fallaci began working as a reporter in 1950, originally to help put herself through medical school. Fallaci served as a war correspondent in the Middle East, Latin America, India/Pakistan, and Vietnam. In 1968, at student demonstrations in Mexico protesting the Olympics, she was shot and assaulted.
When Fallaci interviewed Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, she called him a "tyrant" and removed the chador that she'd been asked to wear as a condition for the interview. Fallici's aggressive style and strong views made her a tough interviewer. She was proud to be subjective, not objective, as a reporter, and she considered herself to be a writer first, a journalist or reporter second. She wrote in one of her books, Interview with History, "I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear. On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice)."
Fallaci credited her values with "belonging to a liberal and politically engaged family" and "the fact of being a Florentine." She continued, "However, I sometimes wonder if the most motivating factor has not been the fact of being born a woman and poor. When you are a woman, you have to fight more. Consequently, to see more and to think more and to be more creative. The same, when you were born poor. Survival is a great pusher."
Fallaci's education was at the University of Florence. She served as a lecturer at many universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago.
Oriana Fallaci published a number of books that were popular in Italy and other countries, including her very personal 1975 Letter to an Unborn Child (on pregnancy and abortion) and her 1979 A Man (about her companion and great love, Greek resistance fighter and martyr, Alekos Panagoulis).
Her 2002 book, The Rage and the Pride, including an essay released soon after September 11, was characterized as anti-Muslim, comparing Islam to Nazis and calling it "oppressive" and characterizing Muslims as "multiplying like rats." She published The Strength of Reason in 2004, warning of "Muslim colonization" in Europe and of "relativist" influences in European culture. In May, 2005, Fallaci was charged before an Italian court with defamation of Islam, based on this 2004 book's contents.
In September, 2005, she met with and publicly praised Pope Benedict XVI. Both Fallaci and the Pope were criticized for the meeting.
She called herself a "Christian atheist." She once wrote of the riskiness of her work, "I envy those who believe in God, because it must be such a consolation, such a help. And (for me) knowing that God doesn't exist gives such a solitude. Such a loneliness. Each time I was in combat, or I was shot, each time I had a tremendous grief; for instance, because a beloved person died, I thought: 'What a pity I don't believe in God, that God doesn't exist!'"
Fallaci was diagnosed with breat cancer in 1993, fighting the disease as aggressively as she reported on world events.
More on About.com:
- Rage and Pride Ignites a Firestorm -- Oriana Fallaci The Rage and the Pride from About.com's Italian Language Guide. Includes complete translation.
- Breast Cancer at About.com
Some obituaries:
- Journalist Fallaci Dies - ANSA - Italy
- Oriana Fallaci - London Times
- Italian Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies - Forbes (AP Report)
- Outspoken Italian journalist dies - BBC
- Italy's provocative journalist Fallaci dies
- Fallaci, Israel critic turned defender, dies at 76 - JTA (Jewish Global News Service)
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