A man (original 1979; edition 1980)

I'll underscore the sentiment to not let Fallaci's later writings about Islam dissuade you from reading this work. Fallaci was a terror to powerful dictatorial forces in both her life and her writing. A MAN is a masterpiece of political fiction and I want to underscore that word: political. A combination of biography, autobiography, and fiction (and the boundaries aren't clear) this screed rips her soul open and exposes itself to the reader. It's a political story, and she writes with political intent and does so with a unique ferocity. One of the other reviewers says that they received a copy from her during student strikes in Poland (I am jealous) and that it changed their life. Me too. My daughter is named after Oriana Fallaci. ( )

I am currently reading the semi-autobiographical novel A Man by Oriana Fallaci, which chronicles her relationship with Alexandros Panagoulis, a Greek poet/anti-fascist fighter/politician who attempted to assassinate the Greek military dictator Papadopoulos in the late 1960's and spent years being tortured in prison before being releasted in the 1970's. After his release he had a love affair with Fallaci and was, according to her, assassinated in 1976.

The first half of the book describes his ill-fated attempt at blowing up Papadopoulos' motorcade and the arrest, torture, and prison that followed. At every step Panagoulis refused to talk or back down, even in the face of intense and ongoing torture. In desperate conditions he tried to attack those who imprisoned him, going on an endless series of hunger strikes, escape attempts, and more subtle forms of psychological warfare. Just the accounts of him cutting himself to use his own blood to write poetry or do differential calculus when his pens and paper were confiscated make Panagoulis an astonishing figure of individual heroism. His struggle in prison is inspiring on a human level. One can almost forget about his nationalism, his pathological militantism and self-sacrifice...

In the final years of her life Fallaci turned to writing racist polemics against Muslims and immigrants. Reading A Man, this late turn towards a neo-fascist "defense of western civilization against the barbarian hordes" position is not totally surprising, but I wouldn't let Fallaci's late work dissuade you from reading this novel.

I'll end this with a poem by Panagoulis, written in 1971 while in prison:

My Address

A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address
This ink is strange; it clots
I write you from a prison
in Greece ( )

L'histoire d'un activiste grec, sous le régime des colonels grecs, que Oriana Fallaci ne pouvait qu'aimer

Given to me by Oriana Fallaci during student strikes in Poland, it changed my life in many ways.