Oriana Fallaci (Florence, 29 June 1929 – Florence, 15 September 20069) is an important name in the history of Italian journalism, as a woman, but also as a professional tout court. Many remember her for her famous interviews, such as the one with Khomeini in 1979 during which, pressing him on women’s rights in Iran, she took off the chador she had been forced to wear, a gesture to which the Ayattollah reacted by leaving the room. Or for the stormy love story with the Greek dissident Alexander Panagulis, interrupted only by his death in a car accident, which she claimed was a political attack. Or for his positions, after the September 11th massacre, against Islamic extremism and the decadence of Western culture. Waiting to see the eight-episode drama on TV Miss Fallacidedicated to the early years of the journalistic career of Oriana Fallaci (played by Miriam Leone), we reveal some curious and lesser-known aspects of her life.
Oriana Fallaci was the daughter of an anti-fascist craftsman who was tortured at Villa Triste and who encouraged her to engage in the Resistance as partisan relay.
The first newspaper I worked for, when I was very young, was the Central Italian morningof Catholic inspiration, from which she was removed because he had refused to write an article against it
Palmiro Togliatti.
She was hired at Era thanks to his journalist uncle Bruno Fallaci, who was the director, but it was relegated to proofreading to avoid accusations of favoritism
As befitted the few female journalists of the time the first services that were entrusted to her were in fashion.
As sent by The European he made twelve trips to tell the tale Vietnam War.
It was seriously wounded by a burst of grapeshot during a massacre of students on the eve of the Mexico Olympics, so much so that she was believed dead and only once she was taken to the morgue did they realize she was still breathing.
Among the famous people she interviewed were Husayn of Jordan, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Pietro Nenni, Giulio Andreotti, Giorgio Amendola, Yasser Arafat, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Haile Selassie, Henry Kissinger, Walter Cronkite, Federico Fellini, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Deng Xiaoping, Willy Brandt, Sean Connery, Muammar Gaddafi, Enrico Berlinguer, Tenzin Gyatso, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Many of these interviews are collected in the book Interview with history.
Despite having attended university, she never graduated but in 1977 Columbia College in Chicago awarded her the honorary degree in literature.
He published throughout twelve books, many of which have been translated in different countries around the world. The last, posthumous, Un hat of cherries.
The famous book Letter to an unborn child comes from his painful experiences of miscarriages.
During his reporting in Lebanon to follow the first peace mission of the Italian army he met the then Army sergeant and future astronaut Paolo Nespoli with whom she had a relationship lasted five years.
While continuing to express anticlerical opinions and declaring himself “atheistic-Christian” in The Force of Reason, he publicly declared hisyour admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, who received her in Castel Gandolfo in a private audience on 27 August 2005.
He left a large book heritage together with other relics such as the backpack used in Vietnam, to the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome, whose rector was then mMr Rino Fisichella, personal friend of the writerwho was close to her on the point of death.
