I spoke with Anastasia Rubis, who goes by Stacy, the author of Oriana, a wonderful moving novel about the trailblazing Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci. Oriana was an international superstar, arguably the best journalist in the world in the 1960s and 70s. She was a woman in a man’s world, which makes her accomplishments that much more impressive.

For some reason, Oriana is not as well known in the States as she is in Europe, which hopefully will change with Stacy’s debut novel. Christiane Amanpour said Oriana’s penetrative, fearless interviews with world leaders, as well as celebrities of the day, should be required reading for all journalism students.

I’ll be honest, when I started the book, I worried that it would be too dry, too intellectual for me. But Oriana was anything but dry. She was fiery, feisty, quick witted, extremely intelligent, a romantic, passionate, not to mention attractive and glamorous. I was soon swept away by the humanity in Oriana’s take on the world.

Below are some edited highlights from my conversation with Stacy Rubis. You can listen to the entire episode here on Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Oriana’s Fearless Interview Style

Elena:  Hello Stacy. I loved your book. I was just so impressed how fearless Oriana was when interviewing leaders of the day.

 Exactly. My favorite quote of hers is, ‘I’m not intimidated by anybody.’ She interviewed Colonel Qaddafi, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat amongst others. These are people with guns and guards in the room. They’re dictators and she just goes for it.

She asks the most provocative, persistent, impolite questions and she’s not afraid to do that and I find that amazing.

Elena: I have a quote from you where you talk about your favorite Oriana lines:  ‘You must be joking’ to a dictator who lied in answer to her question. There were armed guards in the room. And she prodded Gaddafi, “You don’t remember? You should. And also to Gaddafi, “I want to understand why everyone dislikes you so much.” To Kissinger, “Unless I’m mistaken, you’re a very cold man, Dr. Kissinger.” Do you have a favorite interview?

 The Kissinger one, but also, I really love the  interview with the then prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir. Golda and Oriana really hit it off. Oriana really respected Golda. She met Golda in her home in Tel Aviv. It was a very simple home. The housekeeper had gone home. Golda served coffee and cookies and washed her own dishes. They had a serious conversation about peace in the Middle East, but then Golda opened up to Oriana as a woman about the heartbreak of her life. And it was basically that Golda was in love with the same man from the age of 15, and they married, and they had children, but Golda really wanted a bigger life on the world stage, and he wanted a quieter life.

And so that led to their separation. But Golda told Oriana that she loved him until the day he died. And I think that Oriana understood from Golda that sometimes love is not enough. That for a woman who has ambition, it’s really hard to make it work. And I think Oriana was already experiencing that in her own life, to meld the professional and the personal.

Elena: That was great aspect to your book, the conflict Oriana had forever, that she was this fantastic journalist, but she grew up knowing in Italy you had to be a wife and a mother, and take care of your husband, and have children, and no matter how successful she was, she didn’t have that.

 She called it a full life that she wanted, which is family and a profession. She was born in 1929. So, she would be almost a hundred today and there weren’t many role models for women who were doing both. Succeeding at home, succeeding in the world. And that’s what I find so poignant about Oriana’s story. As tough as she was- she basically elbowed her way to the top of a male dominated field, she never went to university. she was born poor, she barely spoke English when she came to the United States – she made it to the point where Newsweek called her the greatest interviewer of her time. Dick Cavett introduced her on his show as a legend. She made it to the top, and yet, there was a price to pay for a woman of her generation.

I find that incredibly poignant and that’s really what I wanted to be at the heart of my book. What I found surprising in doing events and talking about Oriana to people is that young women really relate to the novel. Which makes me happy in one way, but sad in another, because we are still dealing with the challenges that Oriana had, which are work life balance, reproductive rights, and sexism in the workplace. The fact that young women can still relate today really says something.

Elena: As successful as the chain-smoking Oriana was, she struggled at love. She seemed to fall for the wrong men, men who were jealous of her success, until she met Alexander Panagoulis, a Greek poet and resistance fighter, ten years her junior. So, I’m guessing, that a lot of the fabulous love scenes in your book are drawn from A Man, Oriana’s book about Alexander?

 The scenes are based on reality, but they’re fictionalized.  I’m a big romantic, and I think Oriana and Alexander is one of the greatest love stories that we don’t know.

It has passion and politics. She was 10 years older than him. They lived in different countries. She was the powerful one in the couple. She was at the peak of her journalism profession when she met him, and he was just out of prison. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have money.

A couple of journalists have called the book sexy.

Elena: The story is definitely sexy.

 It was an electric love affair, very charged. They had real values and ideals and were willing to give up a lot for those ideals. So, it’s very dramatic. Alexander is a real figure. He resisted Greece’s dictatorship from 1967 to 1974. He almost sacrificed his life to get rid of the dictator. He was thrown into jail, was tortured for five years and when he got out, he still didn’t stop and he was eventually elected to Parliament He decided to try to affect change from the inside. But his enemies assassinated him and made it look like a car accident.

And so, again, a very dramatic, true story. Oriana loved him for those last three years that he was alive. They were together in Italy and in Greece. She calls him her great love. I think he reminded her a lot of her father who resisted Italy’s occupation and who fought for freedom and human rights and for the little people. And that was the same with Alexander.

Elena: Alexander wasn’t diminished by her success at all. He was so proud of her.

 In prison, he read her books. He said reading her books gave him the fire and the courage to stay alive in prison.

Elena: And this is all before he even met her?

Yes. So basically, he fell in love with her by reading her books, and then when he got out of prison, by some kismet, some universal coincidence, she decided to go interview him. So, she left Italy and went to Athens on his third day of freedom to interview him. She stole the assignment from somebody else at her newspaper.

Somebody else was supposed to go to interview the Greek freedom fighter. And she’s like, no, I will go, and she did. And it was love at first sight.