Oriana Fallaci: The Woman and the Myth

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Jacket illustration reprinted by permission of the Xinhua News Agency THE WOMAN AND THE MYTH ARICÒ Southern Illinois University Press THE WOMAN AND THE MYTH SANTO L. ARICÒ Southern IllInoIS unIverSIty PreSS 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siupress.com Printed in the United States of America Biography I nternationally acclaimed as a journalist, war correspondent, interviewer , and novelist, Oriana Fallaci’s public persona reached almost mythic proportions. It is a myth Fallaci herself created, according to Santo L. Aricò, who probes the psychological forces that motivated one of the twentieth century’s most famous and successful women writers. Using his own extensive interviews with the writer, Aricò maps out Fallaci’s journey through life, paying particular attention to her ongoing and painstaking attempts to establish her own mythical status. He first examines her career as a literary journalist, emphasizing the high quality of her writing. From there, he concentrates on how Fallaci’s personal image began to emerge in her writings, as well as the way in which, through her powerful narratives, she catapulted herself into the public eye as her own main character. Santo L.aricò is a professor of French and Italian at the University of Mississippi . He is the author of Rousseau’s Art of Persuasion in “La Nouvelle Héloïse” and the editor of Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance. ISBN 0-8093-3005-9 ISBN 978-0-8093-3005-8 Arico_cvr_CDDC.indd 1 6/9/10 9:07 AM ...