Oriana Fallaci

name. He works as a wood-carver and lives with his parents. He dreams of immigrating to Argentina to seek his fortune. He is not especially tall but has an attractively chiseled face and impertinent blue eyes. Tosca Cantini is twenty-two. After losing her mother when she was young, her anarchist sculptor father sent her off to work for two seamstresses. They have grown fond of her and raised her to be a well-mannered young lady. Eventually, they find her a job with a dowager who wants to take her to Paris as a companion. But on that day, Tosca decides to wear an eye-catching hat decorated with red fruit. It shows off her pretty face and high cheekbones. What pretty cherries, the gallant Edoardo comments. Sometime later, on a ramble on Monte Morello, Oriana is conceived. My mother always said that when she first got pregnant, she didn t want me. She drank Epsom salts every night all the way through the fourth month of her pregnancy, to induce an abortion. But one night, just as she was about to put the glass to her lips, I moved in her belly, almost as if I were saying, I want to be born! And then and there she poured the Epsom salts into a flower vase. And that s why you were born, she used to say. Tosca had other dreams. She wanted to travel the world, to meet artists. She had friends in Florence s bohemian circles, particularly the painter Ott one Rosai, who courted her. She used to say he was a handsome bear of a man, quite the opposite of my father, who was small and lean. When it becomes clear that there is no way around it, Edoardo introduces Tosca to his parents. His mother, Giacoma, known for her unpleasant character, is unwelcoming and takes every opportunity to be unkind. In contrast, his father, Antonio, takes a liking to the girl. Thi

Oriana Fallaci an intimate investigation into a larger-than-life personality.   Publishers Weekly

In Cristina De Stefano s Oriana Fallaci, the stories about Italy s most controversial journalist have the power to stun as they race forward, one more astonishing than the next De Stefano handles Fallaci s turbulent personal side with care [and] has a terrific ear for Fallaci s most piquant quotes the spirit of the book: headlong and direct, all the while maintaining an understanding of a reporter s commitment to asking hard questions. Washington Independent Review of Books

The first major work to emerge in English since its subject s death [Oriana Fallaci] offers the most readable and approachable overview of Fallaci s life. Standpoint

De Stefano s work offers a deeply perceptive insight into the fascinating Italian journalist, delivered in a riveting and engaging narrative style that s evocative of Fallaci herself. PopMatters

This is as powerful a life story as you will ever read.   Foreword 

Cristina De Stefano s new book Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend takes a fresh look at the exceptional life and career of Fallaci, while also revealing a softer side of the notoriously hard-headed and private intellectual. Women in the World, New York Times Affiliate

Biographer Cristina de Stefano has written a fine portrait of Fallaci that is indeed, a la Fallaci, in its sharp journalistic style De Stefano takes us inside Fallaci s turbulent personal life and her formidable accomplishments as a skilled and courageous foreign correspondent. It is a potent reminder that real journalists were valued for much more than a sensational scoop or headline, and like Fallaci they put everything on the line at great personal cost for their chosen profession and craft. New York Journal of Books

In her authorized biography, Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend Cristina De Stefano reminds readers of Fallaci s journalistic legacy. Wall Street Journal 
 
A terrific book about courage, ambition and old-fashioned Italian chutzpah. These are the qualities that made Oriana Fallaci one of the most celebrated journalists of her time. This is a compelling biography of a pioneer of journalistic fearlessness. Charles Kaiser, author of The Cost of Courage
 
A gripping account of the controversial Italian journalist s rise from schoolgirl Partisan courier to courageous war reporter, celebrated author and the world s most feared and admired interviewer. Cristina De Stefano brings to life all the public success and private struggles of a woman who battled her way to the top of a world shaped by men, taking on Henry Kissinger, Muammar Gaddafi and Ayatollah Khomeini along the way. Oriana Fallaci is as vivid, bold and endlessly surprising as its subject. Rachel Aspden, author of Generation Revolution