bitter and piercing polemic

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	• La Rabbia E L'Orgoglio Oriana Fallaci Rizzoli, 2001 average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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bitter and piercing polemic

Fallaci has the reputation of an irascible moral purist, a radical democrat, and she certainly lives up to that here. This book, written in response immediately following the 9/11 attacks, demonstrates that she has lost none of her political passion and acid tongue. It is as if she vomitted it all out in a single sitting, which is not too far off the mark as she says she lived on coffee and didn't sleep for weeks while she wrote.

On the one hand, there is her outrage at what occured, not only with the Muslim world that spawned such dangerous fundamentalists, but also at the reactions of the politicians in the West and in particular in Europe. All I can say is that her condemnations are not terribly nuanced: there is no acknowledgment of moderate moslems and no patience with the all-too-human hypocracy of the "critics" of the US. While this is rather tiresome after a while, it should not overshadow the fact that her perspective and experience as a celebrated journalist are indeed unique and penetrating. But her rhetoric all too easily soars to excess. In a diatribe against colored immigrants in Italy, for example, she flatly charges that they don't work much, that they routinely indulge in sexual assault, and that they cannot be absorbed into Italian civilization but will instead destroy it. That is certainly not racist, but there is real bile there.

On the other hand, she gives some wonderful glimpses into her mind and its development, from the moral integrity of her parents to her meetings with such world leaders as the Dalai Lama (he gets an A+) or Yassar Arafat (D-). In a way, I wish that she had written a memoir. Also, she lets on that she has the cancer that killed her, that she loves New York, that America is the guarantor of the West's freedom. It is a good performance and highly interesting. It is a voice that will be missed.

I read this in Italian and really enjoyed the language: vivid and full of bite, very useful for the development of vocabulary.

Recommended.

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PERFECT!

This woman is not afraid to tell it like it is! She takes no prisoners and tells the whole truth!

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