Fallaci, Oriana

▪ 2007

      Italian journalist and war correspondent (b. June 29, 1929, Florence, Italy—d. Sept. 15, 2006, Florence), earned international iconic status for her passionate, opinionated writing and for her in-depth, often adversarial interviews with such prominent world figures as Indira Gandhi, Henry Kissinger, Deng Xiaoping, and both the shah of Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini. Fallaci dropped out of medical school at the University of Florence when a part-time newspaper job inspired her love of journalism. After joining the staff of the magazine L'Europeo in the 1950s, she covered war zones around the world, including Vietnam and Lebanon. For the last 30 years of her life, Fallaci maintained a home in Manhattan, and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she came out of semiretirement to rail against Islamic fundamentalism and Muslim immigration, notably in La rabbia e l'orgoglio (2001; The Rage and the Pride, 2002) and La forza della ragione (2004; The Force of Reason (2006).

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