ABSTRACT
Oriana Fallaci is possibly the most well known among contemporary Italian women writers, widely read both in and outside Italy. From the late 1950s, when she began to publish in book format, to the early 1990s, when her latest novel, Insciallah (Milan: Rizzoli, 1990) appeared, she was one of the very few Italian writers (whether male or female) whose books regularly reached the top of Italian bestseller lists and registered six-or even seven-figure sales, as in the case of Un uomo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1979), her fictionalised biography of Alekos Panagulis, which sold 1,800,000 copies in two years, and was described as the first Italian 'longseller'.1 Fallaci is also one of the very few writers who command generous advances from Italian publishers and her works have been the object of intensive pre-publication marketing campaigns, involving either massive exposure or exasperating lack of information.2 Finally, Fallaci is among the extremely few contemporary Italian writers who have been regularly translated into a variety of languages and who have managed to command substantial audiences in countries as different as the USA, Iran and Japan.3
