The Oriana Fallaci story. Wars, words and talking through fire

Oriana Fallaci, fot. GianAngelo Pistoia/CC3.0/Wikimedia

This story takes us back to 1920s Florence - a city of artists, priests, craftsmen and rebels. It was there, on June 29, 1929, that a girl was born who would spend the next decades scraping at the conscience of the world. Oriana’s father, Edoardo Fallaci, was a craftsman - and a fierce anti-fascist. He never hid his views, even though Mussolini ruled Italy and dissent came with brutal consequences. His activism wasn’t just words. He handed out leaflets, organised underground actions, sheltered fugitives - and involved his whole family in the fight.

In the Fallaci household, politics were never whispered. They were spoken out loud, with fire and clarity. Oriana’s mother, Tosca Cantini, was the calm force in the chaos, yet she too resisted - in her own way. She passed on her love of books to her daughters. They read together, and every spare coin went to buy more stories.

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By the time she was ten, Oriana had joined the resistance. She carried secret messages. Moved ammunition. Helped the Allies. She wasn’t just witnessing history - she was shaping it. And risking her life to do it. Later, she would say, "I’ve been a soldier since I was a little girl". In 1945, at the age of sixteen, the Italian Army awarded her a medal. To some, she was just a child. To others - a hero.

After the war, she enrolled in Florence’s prestigious Galileo Galilei classical high school. There, her rebellious nature found its rhythm in words. She wasn’t after applause - she was after truth. She challenged her teachers. Led student movements. Her mind raced years ahead of her time, just like her writing. Math wasn’t her strength, but she passed her final exams early - and aced Italian with honours.

Her first steps into journalism were steeped in shadows - more noir than news. Working for "Il Mattino dell’Italia Centrale" in 1946, she covered court cases, visited police stations and morgues. She walked into places other young women wouldn’t dare to go. But Fallaci didn’t fear the dark. She understood that truth is often messy, brutal and complicated. And that’s exactly why it needs to be told.

From Dior to a strange communist funeral

In December 1948, "Il Mattino" ran her piece on Christian Dior’s Florence fashion show. It sounded like a manifesto of modernity: "shorter, narrower". The show served as a pretext for a broader reflection - on the role of women, on cultural change, on beauty. The next day she published a story about Nonna Cesira, who sewed shirts for Garibaldi’s fighters. She could write about anything - and she did it with the same commitment, no matter the subject.


But her ambitions reached further than the regional press. In 1951 she sent an article to the prestigious "Europeo". The report covered the funeral of communist Nello Casini, who had been denied burial in consecrated ground. His comrades, disguised as priests, conducted the ceremony themselves. It was a text full of tension, emotion, theatrical pathos - and authenticity. Editor-in-chief Arrigo Benedetti was impressed. He printed it, thus launching a long collaboration with Fallaci.

Unfortunately, not everyone could appreciate her independence. When she refused to write a piece supporting the Christian-Democratic party for "Il Mattino", she was fired. For her it was no tragedy - rather a liberation. For a short time she tried working for her uncle, the well-known journalist Bruno Fallaci, at "Epoca". But that cooperation satisfied no one. "Professionally, it was the darkest period of my life" - she admitted years later.

Rome opens a window to the world

And then she made a decision that changed everything. In 1954 Oriana moved to Rome. The city promised the start of a global career. It beat as the heart of Italian politics, a boiling crucible of newsrooms, editors, correspondents and reporters. When Oriana Fallaci reached the capital in 1954, she already carried wartime scars, high-profile by-lines and a sacking for refusing to follow a party line. She also carried something else - an unshakeable belief that she would become the best. Not because she felt arrogant, but because she truly believed it.

Editors at "Europeo" showed her no mercy. Although her debut piece had impressed everyone, she fought for every new assignment, for trust, for a seat at the conference table. Men ruled the newsroom. Women typed, proof-read or wrote about fashion and children. Fallaci never fitted that pattern - and she loved that.

She began to file reports from far beyond Italy. The magazine sent her to the United States, Mexico, Greece and Pakistan. She wrote about culture, societies, politics and wars. She drew more out of sources than anyone else. Her pieces felt personal, fearless and sharp. She never hid her opinion of an interviewee. If she did not respect them, the reader knew it by the first paragraph.

In year 1958 she published her first book, "I sette peccati di Hollywood" (The Seven Sins of Hollywood). The journey across America shaped the portrait of a country seen through European eyes. She offered no gushing praise, no spite, only honesty. Critics noticed. Yet the real breakthrough still waited ahead.

In 1967 Fallaci went to Vietnam as a war correspondent. Many women would have stopped at that frontier. She crossed it as if it were the obvious next step. She lived on the front line, documented the fighting and stared straight at death and the madness of war. One air raid left her badly wounded - rubble buried her and she blacked out. She survived. Then she went back to the keyboard.

Nothing, and so be it. Words that made history

The Vietnam War was more than a subject to her. It became a personal experience that reshaped the way she saw the world. From that journey came the book "Niente e così sia" (Nothing, and So Be It), published in 1969. It remains one of her landmark titles - a literary account of an absurd conflict, of fear, trauma and courage, especially female courage.

Fallaci started writing more, and bolder. Each new interview she produced for "Europeo", and later for "Corriere della Sera", turned into an event. She cornered Henry Kissinger into admitting that the Vietnam War had been "useless". She confronted Ayatollah Khomeini like a tyrant and, at the end, ostentatiously cast off the chador she had been told to wear. Yasser Arafat heard that suicide bombers were neither soldiers nor martyrs. She called Lech Wałęsa vain, pretentious and cocksure; he called her a pushy woman.


No one else spoke to the powerful that way. No one else dared to ask those questions. Her interviews felt like duels. She never tried to charm her guests or paint flattering portraits. She aimed straight for the core. When they dodged, she interrupted, provoked, confronted. Some meetings ended in shouting matches, others in silence and a slammed door. Yet what reached print packed power - and no one could ignore it.

Uncomfortable questions, unexpected answers

In conversation she could be merciless - and yet humane. Although she drove the world’s most powerful figures to fury, she never did it to dominate. She did it because she believed everyone deserves the truth. Such moments turned her interviews into more than journalistic exchanges.

She compelled Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, to speak frankly. She fired hard questions at Israel’s prime minister Golda Meir. Deng Xiaoping’s openness in her company startled every major Western outlet. And those are but a few of hundreds of encounters. They told stories of clashing values, of cultures in collision, of the boundaries of freedom - and the courage to push them. Fallaci never feared accusations of bias; she knew objectivity is not coldness but honesty toward the facts.

In 1974 her book "Interview with History" appeared - a collection of conversations with the leading political figures of the twentieth century. Italy read it on its knees. The rest of the world read it trembling. Journalists dissected every answer, every provocation, every sudden pivot. Fallaci proved that the interview is a literary form equal to the novel or reportage - sometimes even stronger, because it pits real personalities and beliefs against daylight, and they do not always survive the glare.

A master increasingly uncompromising

Over time Fallaci earned the title "interview master". "Life", the "New York Times", "Look", the "Washington Post" and "Newsweek" printed her stories. "Vogue", "Rolling Stone" and even "Playboy" profiled her. Publishers translated her books into dozens of languages. Yet success never softened her. On the contrary - as the years passed, her voice grew even sharper.

In 1975 she released one of her most intimate books - "Lettera a un bambino mai nato" ("Letter to a Child Never Born"). Though a work of fiction, it drew on a deeply personal loss - a miscarriage. Fallaci never had children, and her passionate relationship with the Greek revolutionary Alexandros Panagoulis ended in tragedy. He died in a mysterious crash. She never tied herself to anyone seriously again.

In "Letter..." she spoke as a woman torn between freedom and motherhood, certain that the world still refused women full autonomy. The book sparked fierce emotion. Some hailed it as a feminist manifesto, others saw pure despair. But, like everything that left Fallaci’s pen, it could not be ignored. And it was only the first spark in a new blaze of disputes and controversies that would soon flare around her.

No taboo subjects

Riding the wave of popularity, she returned to more personal themes. She wrote essays, short stories and books about emotion, women and solitude. Yet she could not escape politics. She went to Iran after the revolution, to Lebanon during the civil war, to Argentina at the height of terror. She kept going back to the front line - and she always asked the first question. From 1979 she filed for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.


By the late seventies and early eighties Oriana Fallaci already stood as a legend. Women drew inspiration from her. Politicians saw her as a challenge. Editors reached for the heaviest calibre whenever they needed to dig deeper than anyone before. She herself said she felt no interest in the surface. She always wanted to know "why" - and she always asked as though no taboo existed.

In 1990 she released the novel "Inszallah" - set in Beirut, thick with war, mysticism, collapse and hope. The book felt dense, demanding and packed with symbolism. It showed how deeply Fallaci entered every subject she chose. She did not keep travel notes. She forged literature out of experience - a story about what war does to people and the price one pays for truth.

In private life she pulled back from public view. She lived in New York, travelled less, wrote more slowly. Yet she never vanished. Quite the opposite. Critics quoted and analysed every word, every essay, every statement. She remained an authority - she simply changed the tools.

WTC and the turning point

Everything changed on 11 September 2001. The attack on the World Trade Center marked a turning point for her. She lived in New York, she knew the city, she loved its rhythm, diversity and energy. After the attacks she wrote the essay "La rabbia e lʼorgoglio" ("The Rage and the Pride") - a text that divided public opinion more than anything she had ever published.

The essay sounded emotional, angry, steeped in fear and scenes of violence. Fallaci wrote about Islam, Europe, the West, the collapse of civilisation. She warned against fundamentalism and named things plainly - in a manner many readers found controversial. Some saw a prophetess sounding the alarm of doom. Others thought she had crossed a line into hatred.

The book became a bestseller and it drew accusations of Islamophobia, intolerance and prejudice. Fallaci withdrew not a single word. She wrote further essays, defended her stance and refused to join debates that - as she put it - turned journalism into a festival of political correctness.

After the 11 September attack she voiced aloud what many only whispered. She wrote that Europe surrendered, that liberal democracy could not cope with religious fanaticism. Some of her words cut sharper than necessary - perhaps that sharpness helped them reach people. She never explained them away and she never apologised.

Hidden illness and a secret conversation with the Pope

In one of her final interviews she said: "I can’t stop speaking when the world is on fire. Even if nobody listens". And indeed - she spoke until the very end. Her 2004 book "La Forza della Ragione" ("The Force of Reason") answered accusations of hatred and Islamophobia. She wanted to show that she fought not against faith but against an ideology that, in her view, threatened freedom. Yet many failed to see the difference.

By then she had long known she was ill. Doctors had diagnosed cancer in 1991. For years she fought the disease, hiding it from the world. She refused to be judged through the lens of suffering. She wanted to be remembered as a journalist, not as a patient. As a voice - not an echo.

Despite the illness she wrote to the end. Her final years passed mostly on her estate in Tuscany, near Florence, where everything had begun. Beneath olive trees, facing the hills, with books, notes and manuscripts that - as she liked to say - were her only family. Her words still divided opinion, yet no one denied that Fallaci was unique. And irreplaceable.

Although a staunch atheist, she asked for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. The meeting took place at Castel Gandolfo on 27 August 2005. Although Oriana asked for discretion, news of the encounter leaked to the press. The substance of their talk, however, has remained a secret.

The legacy of words and defiance

Oriana Fallaci died on 15 September 2006 in Florence - where she had been born and where she first declared she would become a writer. She was seventy-seven. Her funeral was no political rally, though politicians came in force. Nor was it merely a tribute to a journalist - it testified to the depth of her influence on the present day. Even after death she kept speaking. Her books, essays and interviews did not fade. And they did not cease to divide.


She was a woman who rejected every label. She refused to be only a feminist symbol, though she fought unflinchingly for women’s rights. She declined to serve solely as a left-wing voice, though she had long sympathised with the left. She would not be just a journalist - because she felt that words could cut deeper than weapons, yet must also cut wiser. Fallaci was ahead of her time. And the same time could not always understand her.

Oriana always wrote from the heart, yet also from anger. She used to say journalism is a form of struggle: that it is not enough to report - one must intervene; that one cannot remain merely a witness - one must take part. Hence her professional life brimmed with quarrels, conflicts and admiration. Her conversations with the great of this world passed into history. Yet her pieces about ordinary people - mothers, children, refugees, soldiers - mattered just as much. About the forgotten. Because Oriana Fallaci believed everyone deserves a story.

Neutrality does not exist. Silence is a choice too

After Fallaci’s death, debate flared across Italy - and beyond - about how to remember her. As a war reporter? As the author of feminist manifestos? Or as a conservative critic of Islam? The truth is more complex. Oriana was all of those - yet not only those. She was a person who refused convenient answers, who lived in opposition, and who could turn anger into prose.

Her biography tells the story of the twentieth century: fascism, war, reconstruction, rebellion, feminism, cultural clash, the threat of terrorism, loneliness, love, loss. And described them so vividly that readers sensed she had lived them. She did not pretend. She did not construct a persona. She was that persona.

In later years her life has ever more often reached academic halls. Philologists, historians and political scientists analyse it. Yet the best way to understand her is to pick up her books - "Nothing, and So Be It", "Letter to a Child Never Born", "Interview with History", "The Rage and the Pride" - and sit with them not as with an archive but as with a person. With someone bold enough to tell the world: "I don’t like what I see, and I refuse to stay silent".

Oriana Fallaci once said: "There is no such thing as neutrality. Silence is also a choice". She was a woman who chose to speak - loudly, defiantly, inconveniently, painfully - yet truthfully. And that is why, to this day, no one has replaced her.

Oriana Fallaci timeline:

• 1929, June 29 – Oriana Fallaci`s birthday
• 1940–45 – World War II, involvement in the resistance
• 1946 – First article published in Il Mattino dell’Italia Centrale
• 1951 – Began collaboration with Europeo
• 1951–54 – Worked at Epoca
• 1954 – Moved to Rome and started full-time work at Europeo
• 1955 – Moved to Milan and traveled to the USA for the first time
• 1958 – Published “I sette peccati di Hollywood” (The Seven Sins of Hollywood)
• 1960 – Traveled to the Middle East
• 1961 – Result of the trip: Il sesso inutile (The Useless Sex)
• 1963 – Published interview collection from 1958–1962: Gli antipatici
• 1965 – Summary of articles on space exploration: Se il Sole muore (If the Sun Dies)
• 1967–1975 – Reporting from the frontlines of the Vietnam War
• 1968 – Fallaci wounded in Mexico
• 1969 – Published book on the Vietnam War: Niente e così sia (Nothing, and So Be It)
• 1970 – Published youth book: Quel giorno sulla Luna (That Day on the Moon)
• 1974 – Published Intervista con la storia (Interview with History), Volume I
• 1975 – Published Lettera a un bambino mai nato (Letter to a Child Never Born)
• 1977 – Honorary degree in literature awarded by Columbia College in Chicago
• 1979 – Began collaboration with Corriere della Sera
• 1979 – Published Un uomo (A Man)
• 1982 – Fallaci reports from the Lebanese front
• 1990 – Lebanese front experiences described in Insciallah
• 1990 – Oriana Fallaci retires
• 1991 – Diagnosed with lung cancer
• 2001, September 29 – Ends retirement and declares war on Islam
• 2001 – Published La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride)
• 2004 – Published La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), continued reflections on Islam
• 2004 – Final book published during her lifetime: Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa – L’Apocalisse (Oriana Fallaci Interviews Herself – The Apocalypse)
• 2005, August 27 – Meeting with Pope Benedict XVI
• 2006, August 15 – Oriana Fallaci passes away
• 2006 – Posthumous publication of l’Intervista con il Potere (Interview with Power), Volume II
• 2008, July 30 – Premiere of the Fallaci family saga: Un cappello pieno di ciliege (A Hat Full of Cherries)

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