Riccardo orizio biography

Follow Riccardo Orizio and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Riccardo Orizio Author Page.
Talk Of the Devil · Lost White Tribes · Lost White Tribes Journeys Among the Forgotten · Talk Of the Devil Encounters With Seven.
In his "first life," Orizio has been an international correspondent for CNN and prominent Italian newspapers, with dispatches from more than eighty countries.

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Talk of the Devil

January 1, 2009

The book, simply enough, consists of seven interviews with seven former ruling dictators (in some cases ruling as a husband and wife pair). Each section lists the crimes they committed. The interviews are not chilling in and of themselves, in many cases Hannah Arendt's famous “banality of evil” phrase will run through your mind as you read them. But it is also frightening how people of such different backgrounds find the same reasons to steal, oppress, and kill.

Idi Amin Dada (Uganda) barely mentioned his ruling life at all, and was more interested in discussing his new toy, a satellite TV. Jean-Bedal Bokassa (Republic of Central Africa), deposed the same year as Amin, was obsessed with having been an emperor, and consequently being more important than “mere kings” and “simple presidents”. Wojciech Jaruzelski (Poland) is the odd one here. He saw no moral issues with his actions. In his view, it didn't matter if the government is wrong, disobedience is still treason. Nonetheless, he was the only one to express regrets. Enver and Nexhmije Hoxha (Al

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Talk of the Devil

What happened to the great dictators of contemporary history, responsible for some of its most gruesome chapters? And, now that they are disgraced, or in prison, or exiled, or simply forgotten, do they still seem as terrifying as when they held power? Thanks to his conversion to Islam, the unrepentant Idi Amin lives in exile in Saudi Arabia and is still meddling in African wars. Before dying at his dilapidated mansion in Bangui, Bokassa proclaims himself the 13th apostle of the Roman Catholic Church and talks of his secret meetings with the Pope. Colonel Menghistu, still a guest of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, defends his Red Terror campaign. Mrs Hoxha, from her bare prison cell in Tirana, argues why the most isolated regime in the world was right to adopt a brutal Stalinist ideology and explains how it worked. Paris-based Baby Doc Duvalier, in his first interview after fleeing Haiti in 1986, speaks about voodoo, solar panels, the women of his life and how he lost all his money. Mrs Milosevic, clutching her Fendi handbag, defends the wars in the former Yugosla

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DATE June 3, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Riccardo Orizio discusses his new book "Talk of the
Devil"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The nature of evil has long fascinated historians and storytellers, and most
of us have wondered at one time or another what it would be like to come
face-to-face with someone capable of inhuman cruelty. Our guest, Italian
journalist Riccardo Orizio, has spent years tracking down former dictators
living either in exile or in captivity in their own countries. His new book,
"Talk of the Devil," is based on his interviews with deposed rulers from seven
countries and their relatives. His subjects include Idi Amin of Uganda,
Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti and Mira Markovic, the wife of Slobodan
Milosevic.

The dictators' crimes range from torture to mass execution to, in two cases,
cannibalism. Some of them amassed enormous personal wealth at the expense of
their poor nations; others seemed driven by ideology. Ricc