Oriana Fallaci, a Woman Without Frills: Reflections on Biography, Literature and Civil Commitment

On Tuesday 15 April, the fourteenth event in the monthly series promoted by the cultural association Società Internazionale di divulgazione Manlio Cecovini per gli studi storici sociali ed etici took place at the historic Antico Caffè San Marco in Trieste. The evening was dedicated to Oriana Fallaci.

Andrea Comisso – lawyer, trainer, and writer – was the evening’s speaker, offering a portrait of Fallaci that wove together biographical insights, textual analysis, anecdotes and personal reflections.

Oriana Fallaci emerged as a radically free figure – at times uncomfortable, always resistant to categorisation – driven by an unwavering commitment to truth and justice, even at the cost of loneliness or confrontation.

From her early experience as a teenage partisan courier to her decision to report from war zones for Italy’s leading newspapers, Fallaci’s life was marked by a relentless pursuit of truth and uncompromising coherence. She was never a simple mouthpiece for the ideas of others, but always a critical conscience – including towards herself.

Comisso retraced both well-known and lesser-known episodes of Fallaci’s life and work: from her famous Letter to a Child Never Born – written from personal experience and published fifteen years after its completion – to her intense and tragic love affair with Alekos Panagoulis, told in the novel A Man.

Fallaci was also ahead of her time in tackling central social and cultural issues. Her lesser-known but strikingly modern 1961 book The Useless Sex explored the condition of women with clarity and independence, steering clear of the ideological boundaries of militant feminism.

Her writing, as Comisso highlighted, was direct, repetitive, and captivating. It spoke to the reader – challenged them. Her vivid prose stemmed from necessity and from a vision of literature as a form of moral responsibility. This same attitude led the journalist, in her final years, to choose writing over treating her cancer, which she described in moving and disarmingly honest pages.

Much attention was also given to her complex network of relationships: from clashes with intellectuals such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Natalia Ginzburg, to deep personal bonds with men who inspired her characters – notably the young Paolo Nespoli, who, encouraged by their relationship and his move to New York, found the courage to become an astronaut.

The evening closed with reflections on Fallaci’s unfinished literary testament, A Hat Full of Cherries, a genealogical and family journey into memory, published posthumously. It remains the only one of her works to leave open the possibility of a happy ending, in contrast to the otherwise tragic, realistic, and deeply human tone of her writings.

The event concluded with a lively discussion with the audience and one final thought: Fallaci, with all her excesses and contradictions, compelled generations of readers to think. To choose. To question themselves. And as Comisso reminded us, when you learn that “the method is more important than the result you reach, you’ve achieved something great.”

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