Who was Aristotle Onassis ? The immediate answer is: one of the richest men of the 20th century. But it is a fatally reductive answer. He was a dreamer, a womanizer, an exile, a dishwasher, a shipowner, a Greek, a Turk, an unfaithful husband, a generous lover. Invincible and at the same time fragile and insecure in his lasting affections.
Born in 1906 in the Greek community of Smyrna, then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, in his nearly seventy years of life he built an empire, bought an island, befriended some of the most powerful men in the world , Churchill above all, invented Monte Carlo, made women of extraordinary charm fall at his feet, he who was not handsome, first and foremost Maria Callas and Jacqueline Kennedy , he outlived a beloved son, knew the pinnacle of success and the abyss of loneliness of all unique men.
Aristotle Onassis had many lives, all lived to the full, and infinite desires, none of which remained an abstract dream, because they all became projects to be realized, money and power to be accumulated. The journalist Anna Folli in her Prendersi tutto (Neri Pozza, 2025, pp. 448, also e-book) paints the portrait of Aristotle Onassis in every nuance. She narrates his life as an extraordinary novel, or rather a classical tragedy whose hero is immortal and yet irremediably human.
Onassis wanted everything in life. And he certainly succeeded in his intent . Even if the price to pay in return was very, perhaps too high.
We asked Anna Folli how Aristotle Onassis could be defined in a few words:
