SOURCE: "Waiting for the Suicide Truck," in The New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1992, p. 8.

In the following review, Keneally discusses Fallaci's reportage of the Beirut conflict.

"Inshallah" is a phrase one hears everywhere in the Arab world. It is an utterance of Arab stoicism, meaning "God willing." But God's will is savage indeed in the Beirut that Oriana Fallaci so palpably renders for us.

With the large-scale vigor that is typical of Ms. Fallaci's work, Inshallah begins on the night in October 1983 when two members of a Khomeinist sect, the Sons of God, crash suicide trucks, one into the American Marine compound, the other into the French compound. Nearly 300 young American marines and French troops are destroyed in an instant.

The third large peace-keeping force in the city is the Italians, and Ms. Fallaci's novel is concerned with the Italian officers and men during the three winter...