{"id":370,"date":"2021-01-22T12:13:56","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T12:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/?p=370"},"modified":"2025-04-21T13:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:36:04","slug":"interview-with-journalist-author-eva-giovannini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/22\/interview-with-journalist-author-eva-giovannini\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Journalist &#038; Author: Eva Giovannini"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"2. Eva Giovannini: Journalist (ENG)\" height=\"122\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/5kx7b-f7163a?from=pb6admin&amp;download=1&amp;version=1&amp;auto=0&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Helvetica&amp;skin=1&amp;pfauth=&amp;btn-skin=107\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>This interview appears in the January 2021 Issue of The Open Doors Review. To view the magazine, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/the-magazine\/\">click here<\/a>.<\/p><p>To view the Italian transcript and original audio in Italian, click here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eva Giovannini is the author of the Graphic Novel Oriana Fallaci: Il Vietnam, L\u2019America e l\u2019anno che cambi\u00f2 la Storia. It\u2019s part of a series called \u201cDonne sul Fronte\u201d (Women on the Frontlines), the first large series of graphic journalism published in Italy by PaperFirst and the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. The series of seven volumes puts women at the center of a journalistic work in which journalists tell either the stories of previous war reporters or recount direct experiences from their own reporting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first volume, written by Eva Giovannini is dedicated to Oriana Fallaci, the internationally famous Italian journalist who, in addition to being a war reporter at a time when women were almost never considered for such roles, became known for her fearsome political interviews with such figures as Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi and Deng Xiaoping among others. Of his interview with Fallaci Henry Kissinger admitted it was a desastrous decision after she got him to admit that Vietnam was a \u201cuseless war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eva Giovannini is an Italian journalist, born in Livorno. Reporter for RAI, the author of the book: Europa Anno Zero: il Ritorno dei Nazionalismi, she has also been the presenter of two editions of Italy\u2019s famed Premio Strega prize ceremony and the winner of the Altiero Spinelli Journalistic Prize for European studies. Oriana Fallaci is her first Graphic Novel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-379\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Eva Giovannini: Photo\/pensavopeccioli.it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Interview (translated into English)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Could you describe Oriana Fallaci to someone who might not have heard of her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: Oriana Fallaci was the most important female Italian journalist in the world. Today she remains the most famous journalists that Italy has ever had. She was the first journalist from our country sent to war and the only female Italian journalist sent to Vietnam. Oriana Fallaci had an enormous international fame. Her books were published in 30 languages. All of them have been translated in English. She lived for part of her life in New York on the Upper East Side. She had a very difficult childhood because she was born on the eve of the second world war and along with her family she was a partisan, meaning they fought against the Nazi Fascists. This experience influenced her entire life. She was always deeply libertarian, some would say anarchist, certainly anti-fascist but never communist. Unfortunately, in the last years of her life, her fame was linked to her last works that were pub-lished after September 11 (she died in 2006). In the last five years of her life she wrote terrible things about Islam, very intense and virulent things that she has been strongly criticized for. I also did not share her opinions on her last works &#8230; more than anyone else, the Left ripped her apart. This is why the Italian Right have since appropriated her name but I think if Oriana Fallaci knew that Matteo Salvini had gone to place a flower on her grave to make her a symbol for his party, she would be incredibly angered by that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: She was indeed very criticized for her opinions on the Islamic world. Considering todays tendency toward \u201ccancel culture,\u201d many have written off her work. Do you feel it\u2019s necessary to justify what she wrote at the end of her life or is possible to focus simply on one part of her life?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: In my opinion it would be very wrong to reduce Oriana\u2019s work to the last years of her life. She wrote many intense things but they are just one part of her journalistic and literary works. She wrote many books that are extraordinarily beautiful and that changed the very idea of what Italian journalism could be, especially female Italian journalism. She was a pioneer from any point of view. Books like \u201cA Man\u201d or \u201cNothing and Amen\u201d or \u201cIf the Sun Dies\u201d \u2026 these books are immortal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Why did you choose to focus the Graphic Novel on this particular period of her life \u2013 the first years she was in Vietnam?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: I was asked to choose a period from Oriana\u2019s life that would represent one of her wars. I could have chosen the final part of her life which she described as the war against \u201cthe alien\u201d which was the tumor that eventually killed her. But I chose Vietnam because it seemed like such an interesting and exciting part of her professional life. She was already very famous but not super famous. She was at the dawn of global fame when she left for Vietnam. In fact, \u201cNothing and Amen,\u201d her book about Vietnam that came out in \u201969 would have an incredible success and be translated all over the world. I chose Vietnam because in those years, Oriana wasn\u2019t the only one experiencing fundamental changes. It was the first really important war she followed, but America was also changing. There were the university protests in \u201968, man on the moon, the assassinations of Bob Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Oriana went back and forth between Vietnam and the United States, reporting on these two fronts that were very different but incredibly interesting. So, it seemed like a period in which many things happened and from which everything changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"481\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Cover-OF.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-380\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Cover-OF.jpg 481w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Cover-OF-206x300.jpg 206w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 481px) 100vw, 481px\" \/><figcaption>Donne Sul Fronte: Photo\/Ansa.it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Donne sul front is a project in which Italian female journalists, document other female journalist \u2013 why do you think this is an important project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: I didn\u2019t choose this connection. The idea came from Luigi Politano, the editor of Round Robin who had the insight to have female journalists writing about other female journalists. I think that it\u2019s importnat for women to not always write about the \u201cwomen\u2019s issues\u201d but to write about the whole world. Too often, in our papers, women\u2019s names come up when the subject is babies or discrimination or the victims of femicide. I want to find wom-en\u2019s names associated with stories about Iraq, Siria, Libia, international tensions, Covid\u2026 I want to find women\u2019s names associated with world-relevant topics not just \u201cwomen\u2019s topics.\u201d That\u2019s what makes a real difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Fallaci wrote about some of these \u201csoft\u201d maybe more \u201cfemale\u201d topics like the life of Hollywood actors but also about war and she became known for some incredible interviews with powerful leaders around the world. Considering your personal experience today, do you think female journalists have more opportunities to write about any argument or are they too often relegated to these \u201cfemale\u201d topics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: The road is still long, but there\u2019s no doubt that there has been enormous progress in comparison to the \u201870s when Oriana wrote for l\u2019Europeo, the paper where she was the only woman to appear on many topics. In those years there were only two or three female journalists in Italy who wrote about politics. She was the only one to go to the frontlines. Today no. Today, we are many, we write about everything, we report on wars\u2026 I personally have worked for many years in international politics, following European issues and extreme right terrorism. I can\u2019t say I have ever been discriminated for my sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: What was your personal path to enter the world of Journalism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: I graduated in Pisa with a degree in international literature and then I did two years of journalism school in Rome, after which I did an internship and then I got some contracts with Sky TG 24. From there, I really began. I did a very standard path because I worked in Livorno with the daily il Tirreno, but let\u2019s say that the jump to national work was possible through the journalism school that gave me the opportunity to become a professional journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: So you always wanted to do this work? Since you were very young?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: Yes, since I was little, I have to say I was very curious and I loved words. I was extremely curious about many different things. In 1989, when the Berlin wall fell I was 9 years old and I remember watching the live coverage by RAI with Lilli Gruber, the journalist in Berlin speaking about how the wall fell\u2026 and I remember thinking, this is the most amazing job in the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Was Fallaci a point of reference for you as you became a journalist yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: Yes, she was an unreachable model. A true \u201cMaestra\u201d with a capital M. In my parents house we had \u201cA man\u201d and \u201cLetter to a child never born,\u201d which is a masterpiece, and I thought basically that she was just untouchable. Then when I was older, after September 11, I was 20 years old and I criticized her a lot. But I never lost sight of the fact that people are never one thing, they are always many things and should be viewed in their entirety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been reading a biography of Fallaci\u2019s life and I noticed that the details included in the Graphic Novel are very accurate down to the dialogue and specific events. Was this project the work of biography or did you fictionalize anything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: No, I kept very faithfully to reality. I really just had to work on making cuts so in that sense, I took the liberty of choosing which things would be included but I didn\u2019t invent anything. I studied a lot and didn\u2019t invent anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: How was the experience over all of creating a Graphic Novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: Fun. Tiring, because of all the revisions &#8211; I did ten drafts. Fascinating, because I learned how to make a Graphic Novel from research right up to designing the vignettes, like the process of saying, \u201cOk, I\u2019m going to tell this episode\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s already a choice\u2026 but then, What do I tell exactly? Everything? No. Because the vignette has to say everything in ten words so\u2026 ok\u2026 how do I arrange the scene? Whose point of view is it from? Are we seeing through Oriana\u2019s eyes or someone else looking at Oriana? Is the scene seen from above or below? Is this panel silent or do we have her say this line here or do we keep it from the next panel? These kind of questions\u2026 for 67 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: The story you included of Oriana\u2019s attempt to adopt a child in Vietnam really struck a cord with me. Why did you choose to include this detail to illuminate her character out of all the years she was in the war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: Because in the book \u201cNothing and Amen,\u201d she wrote about this story in a way that was masterful and that really hit me. And also because I think it was an episode that changed the course of her life \u2013 she was 38, 39 years old, she wanted to be a mother, she was in love with Fran\u00e7ois Pelou but he was married. Their love story lasted many years but they never had children. She says at one point that she has a strong need for life and decides, \u201cOk, I\u2019ll adopt a child.\u201d Then she had the great misfortune to not be able to do it because the girl she chose turned out to be blind, they wouldn\u2019t let her adopt her, there were complications. Then Oriana never got pregnant, well, she did but she lost the children through miscarraiges. Who knows what would have happened in Oriana\u2019s life if she could have brought home that Vietnamese child and become a mother. Who knows if the path of her life would have been the same? We can\u2019t say but I\u2019ve always been fascinated with these turning points. Those moments in which anything can happen and can change the direction of your life and you\u2019ll never know if it was destiny that something didn\u2019t go as you wanted or because you made a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Oriana argued with an editor at the beginning of her career because she didn\u2019t want to write an article with the explicit angle of the newspaper. For her, uncovering the truth about a person or situation is always the most important thing. At the same time, she said that a journalist can never be completely objective, that you can never fully separate yourself from your work. What do you think about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: She was a free journalist, first of all. Free, very prepared, she studied a lot and she was never detatched from the things she wrote about. That doesn\u2019t mean she wasn\u2019t intellectually honest, she was intellectually honest, but she had a bias, in the sense that in every situation she had her opinions. She said that so-called Anglo-Saxon journalism, or journalism that didn\u2019t take a position didn\u2019t exist in her opinion. Because we all have a filter that is cultural, or emotional or biological or familial, that influences our point of view. What is the difference between a deceptive or manipulative journalist and Oriana Fallaci? It\u2019s that Oriana Fallaci declared that she had a point of view. She didn\u2019t pretend not to have one. She declared it. And this was what made her great because she was always as sharp as a knife but she didn\u2019t take orders from anyone. Her point of view was hers, never of whoever commissioned her to do an interview, it was always just Oriana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"311\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Fallaci-wikipedia.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Fallaci-wikipedia.jpg 311w, https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Fallaci-wikipedia-222x300.jpg 222w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 311px) 100vw, 311px\" \/><figcaption>Oriana Fallaci. Photo\/Wikipedia.it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lauren<\/strong>: Could you recommend a book of Oriana&#8217;s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Eva<\/strong>: I&#8217;d recommend &#8220;Nothing and Amen&#8221; because its as the source of inspiration for this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cOriana Fallaci: Il Vietnam, L\u2019America e l\u2019anno che cambi\u00f2 la Storia\u201d by Eva Giovannini and the other volumes of \u201cDonne Sul Fronte\u201d are available for puchase online at shop.ilfattoquotidiano.it.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This interview appears in the January 2021 Issue of The Open Doors Review. To view the magazine, click here. To view the Italian transcript and original audio in Italian, click here. Introduction Eva Giovannini is the author of the Graphic Novel Oriana Fallaci: Il Vietnam, L\u2019America e l\u2019anno che cambi\u00f2 la Storia. It\u2019s part of a series called \u201cDonne sul Fronte\u201d (Women on the Frontlines), the first large series of graphic journalism published in Italy by PaperFirst and the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. The series of seven volumes puts women at the center of a journalistic work in which journalists tell either the stories of previous war reporters or recount direct experiences from their own reporting.&nbsp; The first volume, written by Eva Giovannini is dedicated to Oriana Fallaci, the internationally famous Italian journalist who, in addition to being a war reporter at a time when women were almost never considered for such roles, became known for her fearsome political interviews with such figures as Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi and Deng Xiaoping among others. Of his interview with Fallaci Henry Kissinger admitted it was a desastrous decision after she got him to admit that Vietnam was a \u201cuseless war.\u201d Eva Giovannini is an Italian journalist, born in Livorno. Reporter for RAI, the author of the book: Europa Anno Zero: il Ritorno dei Nazionalismi, she has also been the presenter of two editions of Italy\u2019s famed Premio Strega prize ceremony and the winner of the Altiero Spinelli Journalistic Prize for European studies. Oriana Fallaci is her first Graphic Novel.&nbsp; Interview (translated into English) Lauren: Could you describe Oriana Fallaci to someone who might not have heard of her? Eva: Oriana Fallaci was the most important female Italian journalist in the world. Today she remains the most famous journalists that Italy has ever had. She was the first journalist from our country sent to war and the only female Italian journalist sent to Vietnam. Oriana Fallaci had an enormous international fame. Her books were published in 30 languages. All of them have been translated in English. She lived for part of her life in New York on the Upper East Side. She had a very difficult childhood because she was born on the eve of the second world war and along with her family she was a partisan, meaning they fought against the Nazi Fascists. This experience influenced her entire life. She was always deeply libertarian, some would say anarchist, certainly anti-fascist but never communist. Unfortunately, in the last years of her life, her fame was linked to her last works that were pub-lished after September 11 (she died in 2006). In the last five years of her life she wrote terrible things about Islam, very intense and virulent things that she has been strongly criticized for. I also did not share her opinions on her last works &#8230; more than anyone else, the Left ripped her apart. This is why the Italian Right have since appropriated her name but I think if Oriana Fallaci knew that Matteo Salvini had gone to place a flower on her grave to make her a symbol for his party, she would be incredibly angered by that. Lauren: She was indeed very criticized for her opinions on the Islamic world. Considering todays tendency toward \u201ccancel culture,\u201d many have written off her work. Do you feel it\u2019s necessary to justify what she wrote at the end of her life or is possible to focus simply on one part of her life?&nbsp; Eva: In my opinion it would be very wrong to reduce Oriana\u2019s work to the last years of her life. She wrote many intense things but they are just one part of her journalistic and literary works. She wrote many books that are extraordinarily beautiful and that changed the very idea of what Italian journalism could be, especially female Italian journalism. She was a pioneer from any point of view. Books like \u201cA Man\u201d or \u201cNothing and Amen\u201d or \u201cIf the Sun Dies\u201d \u2026 these books are immortal. Lauren: Why did you choose to focus the Graphic Novel on this particular period of her life \u2013 the first years she was in Vietnam? Eva: I was asked to choose a period from Oriana\u2019s life that would represent one of her wars. I could have chosen the final part of her life which she described as the war against \u201cthe alien\u201d which was the tumor that eventually killed her. But I chose Vietnam because it seemed like such an interesting and exciting part of her professional life. She was already very famous but not super famous. She was at the dawn of global fame when she left for Vietnam. In fact, \u201cNothing and Amen,\u201d her book about Vietnam that came out in \u201969 would have an incredible success and be translated all over the world. I chose Vietnam because in those years, Oriana wasn\u2019t the only one experiencing fundamental changes. It was the first really important war she followed, but America was also changing. There were the university protests in \u201968, man on the moon, the assassinations of Bob Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Oriana went back and forth between Vietnam and the United States, reporting on these two fronts that were very different but incredibly interesting. So, it seemed like a period in which many things happened and from which everything changed. Lauren: Donne sul front is a project in which Italian female journalists, document other female journalist \u2013 why do you think this is an important project? Eva: I didn\u2019t choose this connection. The idea came from Luigi Politano, the editor of Round Robin who had the insight to have female journalists writing about other female journalists. I think that it\u2019s importnat for women to not always write about the \u201cwomen\u2019s issues\u201d but to write about the whole world. Too often, in our papers, women\u2019s names come up when the subject is babies or discrimination or the victims of femicide. I want to find wom-en\u2019s names associated with stories about Iraq, Siria, Libia, international tensions, Covid\u2026 I want to find women\u2019s names associated with world-relevant topics not just \u201cwomen\u2019s topics.\u201d That\u2019s what makes a real difference. Lauren: Fallaci wrote about some of these \u201csoft\u201d maybe more \u201cfemale\u201d topics like the life of Hollywood actors but also about war and she became known for some incredible interviews with powerful leaders around the world. Considering your personal experience today, do you think female journalists have more opportunities to write about any argument or are they too often relegated to these \u201cfemale\u201d topics? Eva: The road is still long, but there\u2019s no doubt that there has been enormous progress in comparison to the \u201870s when Oriana wrote for l\u2019Europeo, the paper where she was the only woman to appear on many topics. In those years there were only two or three female journalists in Italy who wrote about politics. She was the only one to go to the frontlines. Today no. Today, we are many, we write about everything, we report on wars\u2026 I personally have worked for many years in international politics, following European issues and extreme right terrorism. I can\u2019t say I have ever been discriminated for my sex. Lauren: What was your personal path to enter the world of Journalism? Eva: I graduated in Pisa with a degree in international literature and then I did two years of journalism school in Rome, after which I did an internship and then I got some contracts with Sky TG 24. From there, I really began. I did a very standard path because I worked in Livorno with the daily il Tirreno, but let\u2019s say that the jump to national work was possible through the journalism school that gave me the opportunity to become a professional journalist. Lauren: So you always wanted to do this work? Since you were very young? Eva: Yes, since I was little, I have to say I was very curious and I loved words. I was extremely curious about many different things. In 1989, when the Berlin wall fell I was 9 years old and I remember watching the live coverage by RAI with Lilli Gruber, the journalist in Berlin speaking about how the wall fell\u2026 and I remember thinking, this is the most amazing job in the world.&nbsp; Lauren: Was Fallaci a point of reference for you as you became a journalist yourself? Eva: Yes, she was an unreachable model. A true \u201cMaestra\u201d with a capital M. In my parents house we had \u201cA man\u201d and \u201cLetter to a child never born,\u201d which is a masterpiece, and I thought basically that she was just untouchable. Then when I was older, after September 11, I was 20 years old and I criticized her a lot. But I never lost sight of the fact that people are never one thing, they are always many things and should be viewed in their entirety. Lauren: I\u2019ve been reading a biography of Fallaci\u2019s life and I noticed that the details included in the Graphic Novel are very accurate down to the dialogue and specific events. Was this project the work of biography or did you fictionalize anything? Eva: No, I kept very faithfully to reality. I really just had to work on making cuts so in that sense, I took the liberty of choosing which things would be included but I didn\u2019t invent anything. I studied a lot and didn\u2019t invent anything. Lauren: How was the experience over all of creating a Graphic Novel? Eva: Fun. Tiring, because of all the revisions &#8211; I did ten drafts. Fascinating, because I learned how to make a Graphic Novel from research right up to designing the vignettes, like the process of saying, \u201cOk, I\u2019m going to tell this episode\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s already a choice\u2026 but then, What do I tell exactly? Everything? No. Because the vignette has to say everything in ten words so\u2026 ok\u2026 how do I arrange the scene? Whose point of view is it from? Are we seeing through Oriana\u2019s eyes or someone else looking at Oriana? Is the scene seen from above or below? Is this panel silent or do we have her say this line here or do we keep it from the next panel? These kind of questions\u2026 for 67 pages. Lauren: The story you included of Oriana\u2019s attempt to adopt a child in Vietnam really struck a cord with me. Why did you choose to include this detail to illuminate her character out of all the years she was in the war? Eva: Because in the book \u201cNothing and Amen,\u201d she wrote about this story in a way that was masterful and that really hit me. And also because I think it was an episode that changed the course of her life \u2013 she was 38, 39 years old, she wanted to be a mother, she was in love with Fran\u00e7ois Pelou but he was married. Their love story lasted many years but they never had children. She says at one point that she has a strong need for life and decides, \u201cOk, I\u2019ll adopt a child.\u201d Then she had the great misfortune to not be able to do it because the girl she chose turned out to be blind, they wouldn\u2019t let her adopt her, there were complications. Then Oriana never got pregnant, well, she did but she lost the children through miscarraiges. Who knows what would have happened in Oriana\u2019s life if she could have brought home that Vietnamese child and become a mother. Who knows if the path of her life would have been the same? We can\u2019t say but I\u2019ve always been fascinated with these turning points. Those moments in which anything can happen and can change the direction of your life and you\u2019ll never know if it was destiny that something didn\u2019t go as you wanted or because you made a mistake. Lauren: Oriana argued with an editor at the beginning of her career&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,20],"tags":[34,32,30,33,25,9,15,31,26],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-january-2021-issue","tag-author-interview","tag-donne-sul-fronte","tag-eva-giovannini","tag-graphic-novel","tag-interview","tag-literary-magazine","tag-open-doors-review","tag-oriana-fallaci","tag-podcast"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Eva-Giovannini-1.jpg","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}