London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

La Fallaci is Dead

Leftist Italian Writer, Atheist, Defender of the West, Sometime New Yorker, Once Made the Ayatollah Laugh

Oriana Fallaci, that indomitable and cantankerous Italian, has finally succumbed to cancer in her native land. When she first learnt of her cancer years ago, she kept smoking and refused to treat it because she had “too much writing to do”. Later, when it became difficult to eat solid foods, she drank champagne instead. Her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger was described by him as “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press”.

While an ardent leftist, she was an unrepentant foe of what she saw as the Islamic colonization of Europe. Her diatribes against the Muslim immigrants who habitually pissed on the walls of Florence cathedral earned her the ire of many, and legal proceedings were initiated against her in France. The liberal commentator Christopher Hitchens described her work as “an example of how not to write about Islam”. She began writing her infamous The Rage and the Pride, a book teeming with passion and righteous indignation, on September 11, 2001 at her home in New York.

Fallaci said she felt encouraged when Cardinal Ratzinger, another thinker who warned against Western self-loathing, was elected pope. “I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger,” she wrote. The Telegraph reports that the Holy Father granted her a private audience a number of months ago, on the condition that never disclose its contents.

Oriana Fallaci will be buried tommorrow in the family tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence. There will be no funeral; I hope a priest will say a mass for the repose of her soul.

Daily Telegraph obituary
Times of London obituary
‘La journaliste Oriana Fallaci est morte’, Le Figaro

The New Yorker featured a good profile of Fallaci in its June 6, 2006 issue, ‘The Agitator’ by Margaret Talbot.

Published at 10:02 am on Saturday 16 September 2006. Categories: Arts & Culture Books Politics Tags: .
Comments

Being denounced by Christopher Hitchens puts La Fallaci in some fine company. RIP.

— Steve M 16 Sep 2006 10:58 am
— Jacobite 17 Sep 2006 6:18 pm

You could always have one said.

Can be done for $10 dollars.

— Samuel J. Howard 18 Sep 2006 9:01 am

Yes, God bless the Catholic Church. Eternal repose and redemption for ten bucks.

— Philip 19 Sep 2006 5:32 pm

And while we’re at it, God bless Philip! We wouldn’t have any reasoned, well-informed commentary on this site without him.

As it happens, I have just been informed that a Mass will be said for Miss Fallaci on Thursday.

— Andrew Cusack 19 Sep 2006 6:16 pm

Thank you, Mr Cusack. I do like to think I bring a little light to your darkness now and then.

I’m sure Ms Fallaci would have disapproved of the Mass but good on the Church for going ahead with it anyway. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

— Philip 19 Sep 2006 6:59 pm

I bet she repented her sins to the Pope before she died.

— mandingo jones 20 Sep 2006 8:23 pm

Admittedly I am only familiar with her recent work and the recent New Yorker profile of her, but I think she would have appreciated the gesture if not the reality of the act.

— Samuel J. Howard 22 Sep 2006 9:12 am
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