| Rage and Pride Ignites a Firestorm |
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Part 2: Instant Best Seller
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"Fallaci non avrebbe mai dovuto stare in silenzio per 10 anni."
ANNAHOST
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In spite of, or perhaps because of, the uproar surrounding La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio, when the essay was printed in book format it became an instant best seller. In Italy it has sold one million copies over seven months and in France it has been the number one bestseller since its publication in May. The English version The Rage and The Pride is scheduled to be published in the United States in September 2002.
For the American edition Oriana Fallaci has personally translated into English the
Italian text and added several pages, also concerning the United States. This edition will contain a preface in which Fallaci explains how the book came to be and, considering the reasons why Islamic terrorism will not end with the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan,
describes the global reality of the Jihad: the Holy War.
Racist Rant or Patriotic Polemic
Some readers have called La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio "the most impassioned wake up call for Italian patriotism in decades...and a long overdue rejection of political correctness, a paean to the values of the West and to their fruition in the United States." Others have denounced Oriana Fallaci for what they interpret as Islamophobia, racist delirium, and an anti-immigrant tirade.
A translated version of La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio may not convey the exact meaning and immediacy of Fallaci's Italian prose to an American audience, but at the very least, it is a first step in understanding the discussions taking place in Italy and the U.S. today regarding the so-called Western Crusade and essential reading for anyone attempting to comprehend the geopolitical fallout after the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Perhaps the best approach to understanding The Rage and The Pride is to consider what Ferruccio de Bortoli, the publisher of Il Corriere della Sera, wrote, in the introduction to the essay when it first appeared in his publication.
"With this extraordinary piece, Oriana Fallaci breaks a decade of silence. A very long silence. Our most celebrated female writer (she calls herself a writer and refuses to use the word 'journalist' anymore) lives a good part of the year in Manhattan. She doesnít answer the phone, opens the door rarely, and goes out even less. She never gives interviews. Everyone has tried, no–one has succeeded. Isolated. But history and destiny saw to it that the center of the modern apocalypse opened, like a Dantesque abyss, not far from her lovely and literary home.The shockwave of the morning of September 11 disturbed even Orianaís hermit–like—and hermetically sealed—repose. She opens the door, seeming to marvel at the unfamiliar gesture...Her glance is at once tender and ferocious. Oriana has been working for years on a very important work, awaited by all the world, among piles of documents in a disorder that only appears as such, with warrior-like fervor. I asked her to write what she had seen, experienced, felt after that Tuesday, and Oriana gathered a few pages of emotions and thoughts.
'I leave shreds of my soul on every experience,' she wrote some years ago. Itís still true, very true. These are bracing thoughts. Explosive ones. Thoughts to reason over and reflect on. On America, on Italy, on the Islamic world. On patriotism (itís surprising what she says about patriotism). Invectives and theses that surge at once from the head and from the heart, or rather from the head toward the heart. She bursts out: 'Someone had to say these things. I said them. Now leave me in peace. The door is closed again. And I donít want to reopen it.' Her usual talons. People are going to be talking about this piece. And how."
Rage and Pride Ignites a Firestorm > Page 1, 2
