A biography of the most famous Italian journalist of the twentieth century, an inspiring and often controversial woman who defied the codes of reportage.
The subject’s absence turns out to be a kind of blessing, leaving the author a free hand to recount what is, by any measure, a fascinating and utterly sui generis life ... De Stefano, who has filled in some important biographical gaps, is less reliable as a critic of Fallaci’s work. She seems not to recognize that these final productions, with their depressing quotient of egotism and Islamophobia, ended Fallaci’s career on a low note.
...Cristina De Stefano’s new biography of the Italian journalistic superstar Oriana Fallaci — unabashed hagiography to counter the writer’s late-life reputational demise — must suffice ...Fallaci was a piquant, stylish beauty, self-consciously photogenic in the Joan Didion way, a midcentury woman writer vigilant about her public image ...De Stefano, who had access to living friends, family members and colleagues as well as archives and letters, reveals another side to her life — long periods of self-imposed emotional and actual isolation to devote herself to writing, interspersed with anguished affairs ... De Stefano doesn’t excuse her subject’s intolerance, but she does put it in context.
