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Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci
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First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Oriana Fallaci
62 books1,630 followersOriana 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 1946. 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. 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. According to The New Yorker, her former support of the student activists "devolved into a dislike of Mexicans":
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 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 Un Uomo (A Man) was inspired by the life of Panagoulis.
During her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger, Kissinger agreed that the Vietnam War was a "useless war" and compared himself to "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse".Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."
She has written several novels uncomfortably close to raw reality which have been bestsellers in Italy and widely translated. Fallaci, a fully emancipated and successful woman in the man's world of international political and battlefront journalism, has antagonized many feminists by her outright individualism, her championship of motherhood, and her idolization of heroic manhood. In journalism, her critics have felt that she has outraged the conventions of interviewing and reporting. As a novelist, she shatters the invisible diaphragm of literariness, and is accused of betraying, or simply failing literature.
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.
Fallaci was a life-long heavy smoker. She died on September 15, 2006 in her native Florence from breast cancer.
Fallaci began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for the Italian paper Il mattino dell'Italia centrale in 1946. 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. 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. According to The New Yorker, her former support of the student activists "devolved into a dislike of Mexicans":
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 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 Un Uomo (A Man) was inspired by the life of Panagoulis.
During her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger, Kissinger agreed that the Vietnam War was a "useless war" and compared himself to "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse".Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."
She has written several novels uncomfortably close to raw reality which have been bestsellers in Italy and widely translated. Fallaci, a fully emancipated and successful woman in the man's world of international political and battlefront journalism, has antagonized many feminists by her outright individualism, her championship of motherhood, and her idolization of heroic manhood. In journalism, her critics have felt that she has outraged the conventions of interviewing and reporting. As a novelist, she shatters the invisible diaphragm of literariness, and is accused of betraying, or simply failing literature.
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.
Fallaci was a life-long heavy smoker. She died on September 15, 2006 in her native Florence from breast cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 4, 2026
devastante per me constatare che una donna intelligente come la Fallaci fosse così razzista oltre che convinta sionista. fosse ancora viva, sarebbe una tra chi sostiene che Israele ha il diritto di difendersi sterminando il popolo palestinese. triste anche vedere che al pensiero della morte, su di lei incombente al tempo, riuscisse comunque a trovare un modo per essere islamofoba a livelli imbarazzanti. il fatto che si sia intervistata da sola è di per sé esplicativo della persona che era
December 28, 2025
La megalomania, l'ego-riferimento e lo status quo del privilegio - mascherato in "libertà" - fatto a libro e a persona. Mi aspettavo di leggere un libro razionale, oggettivo, dissidente (ma con basi), un libro "analista" e veritiero...e mi sono ritrovata di fronte al corrispettivo libresco del "non sono razzista ma", a cui seguono analisi non obiettive (ve ne è solo parvenza), non contestualizzate e soprattutto non distaccate e lucide. Una donna che, se vogliamo concederle il dono dell'intelligenza, utilizza quel dono nella maniera peggiore possibile: sentenziando, puntando il dito verso chi provoca fastidio solo personale e frutto di pregiudizi, argomentando e analizzando in modo parziale e ideologico. Il frutto di un'epoca maledettamente iper-individualista, iper-liberalista e iper-liberale, fredda, cinica, bugiarda, manipolatrice, populista, con i semi del conservatorismo e della nuova sbandata nell'estremismo di destra; Oriana Fallaci e questo libro incarnano tutto questo, perfettamente e decisamente non nel modo in cui voleva far passare.
Un inno alla disonestà intellettuale, storica, sociale e umana.
Un inno alla disonestà intellettuale, storica, sociale e umana.
September 1, 2026
Dio solo sa quanto è gustoso leggere libri così. Chi la iscrive in liste preconcette e definitive, sono di certo gli stessi che amerebbero veder i suoi libri bruciare. A costoro va dedicata una consolazione necessaria: di fuoco nei suoi libri c'è n'è già, inestinguibile.
Le umane preoccupazioni sulla propria salute e su quella del mondo, sui valori calpestati dell'Europa, sull'ipocrisia scialba e onnipervasiva che si spaccia per virtù inclusiva, e poi il panorama politico dei suoi ultimi anni, aneddoti, curiosità.
La Fallaci come pochi, ha la sacrosanta qualità d'oro di poter esprimere quello che i più, tra storici e intellettuali non riescono. Una libertà maturata dalle sue esperienze in guerra, Vietnam, Cambogia, Bangladesh, Libano, Giordania, le viene dall'esperienza viva, in prima persona, d'esser andata a vedere coi suoi occhi e con i suoi rischi i perché e i percome.
Criticata, osteggiata, da chi avrebbe voluto buttarle addosso il mondo.
Ma la Fallaci le bombe non le ha mai evitate. Dimostrando coraggio, e l'umana libertà di sentirsi libera di esprimere quello che sentiva.
Un libro che accende, che fa riflettere, che grida e che piange senza lacrime.
Le umane preoccupazioni sulla propria salute e su quella del mondo, sui valori calpestati dell'Europa, sull'ipocrisia scialba e onnipervasiva che si spaccia per virtù inclusiva, e poi il panorama politico dei suoi ultimi anni, aneddoti, curiosità.
La Fallaci come pochi, ha la sacrosanta qualità d'oro di poter esprimere quello che i più, tra storici e intellettuali non riescono. Una libertà maturata dalle sue esperienze in guerra, Vietnam, Cambogia, Bangladesh, Libano, Giordania, le viene dall'esperienza viva, in prima persona, d'esser andata a vedere coi suoi occhi e con i suoi rischi i perché e i percome.
Criticata, osteggiata, da chi avrebbe voluto buttarle addosso il mondo.
Ma la Fallaci le bombe non le ha mai evitate. Dimostrando coraggio, e l'umana libertà di sentirsi libera di esprimere quello che sentiva.
Un libro che accende, che fa riflettere, che grida e che piange senza lacrime.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews