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Table of contents
About the author
INTERVIEWS FROM THE SHORT CENTURY
LITERARY PROPERTY RESERVED
Introduction
Subcomandante Marcos
Peter Gabriel
Claudia Schiffer
Gong Li
Ãngrid Betancourt
Aung San Suu Kyi
LucÃa Pinochet
Mireya GarcÃa
KenzaburÅ Åe
Benazir Bhutto
King Constantine II of Greece
Hun Sen
Roh Moo-hyun
Hubert de Givenchy
Maria Dolors Miró
Tamara Nijinsky
Franco Battiato
Ivano Fossati
Tinto Brass
Peter Greenaway
Suso Cecchi dâAmico
Rocco Forte
Nicolas Hayek
Roger Peyrefitte
José Luis de Vilallonga
Teresa Cordopatri
Andrea Muccioli
Xanana Gusmão
José Ramos-Horta
Basilio do Nascimento
Khalida Messaoudi
Leonora Jakupi
Lee Kuan Yew
Khushwant Singh
Shobhaa De
Joan Chen
Carlos Saúl Menem
Pauline Hanson
Dmitri Volkogonov
Gao Xingjian
Wang Dan
Zhang Liang
Stanley Ho
Palden Gyatso
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
Cardinal (Jaime) Sin
Võ Nguyên Giáp
Sergio Corsini
Macram Max Gassis
Men Songzhen
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes
About the author
By the same author:
Il Male inutile
I Cannibali di Mao
Cristo si è fermato a Shingo
Acteal
On board a US Army helicopter, mid-mission
Marco Lupis is a journalist, photojournalist and author who has worked as La Repubblica âs Hong Kong correspondent.
Born in Rome in 1960, he has worked as a special and foreign correspondent the world over, but mainly in Latin America and the Far East, for major Italian publications ( Panorama , Il Tempo , Corriere della Sera , LâEspresso and La Repubblica ) and the state-owned broadcaster RAI. Often posted to war zones, Marco was one of the few journalists to cover the massacres in the wake of the declaration of Timor-Lesteâs independence, the bloody battles between Christians and Muslims in the Maluku Islands, the Bali bombings and the SARS epidemic in China. He covered the entire Asia-Pacific region, stretching from Hawaii to the Antarctic, for over a decade. Marco has interviewed many of the worldâs most prominent politicians, particularly from Asia, including the Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. His articles, which often decry human rights abuses, have also appeared in daily newspapers in Spain, Argentina and the United States .
Marco Lupis lives in Calabria.
INTERVIEWS FROM THE SHORT CENTURY
INTERVIEWS
from the Short Century
Marco Lupis
Close encounters with leading 20th century figures from the worlds of politics,
culture and the arts
Translated by Andrew Fanko
Tektime
LITERARY PROPERTY RESERVED
Copyright © 2017 by Marco Lupis Macedonio Palermo di Santa Margherita
All rights reserved to the author
interviste@lupis.it
www.marcolupis.com
First Italian edition 2017
© Tektime 2018
This work is protected by copyright.
Any unauthorised duplication, even of part of this work, is strictly forbidden.
The journalist is the historian of the moment
Albert Camus
For Francesco, Alessandro and Caterina
Introduction
Tertium non datur
As I walked briskly along Corso Venezia towards the San Babila theatre on an autumnal day in Milan back in October 1976, I was about to conduct my very first interview.
I was sixteen years old, and together with my friend Alberto I was hosting a radio show for young people called âSpazio giovaniâ on one of Italy's earliest privately owned stations, Radio Milano Libera .
These were incredible times, when it seemed as though anything could happen, and frequently it did. Marvellous times. Horrible times. These were the anni di piombo [the Years of Lead], the years of youth protest, anarchy, strikes in schools and demonstrations that inevitably ended in violence. These were years of hope, filled with a cultural fervour so vibrant and all-consuming that it drew you in and threatened to explode. These were years of young people fighting and being killed, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right. These were simpler times: you were either on one side or the other. Tertium non datur.
But above all, these were times when every one of us felt, and often knew, we had the power to change things. To â in our own small way â make a difference .
Amid all the chaos, excitement and violence, we were actually pretty laid back, taking things as they came. Terror attacks, bombings, the Red Brigades...these were all part and parcel of our youth and adolescence, but overall they didn't worry us excessively. We had quickly learned to survive in a manner not too dissimilar to that which I would later encounter among those living amid conflict or civil war. They had adapted to such extreme living conditions, a bit like we had back in the 1970s.
Alberto and I really wanted to make a difference. Whereas today's kids are engrossed in selfies, Instagram and smartphones, we poured our boundless enthusiasm and utterly carefree attitude into reading everything in sight and going to concerts, music festivals (it was that magical time when rock music was really taking off) and film clubs.