Chinese name after this incident. Based on his experiences in China, he wrote La Porta Proibita (Behind The Forbidden Door). Books and essays Terzani's experiences in Asia are described in articles and essays in newspapers, as well as in the several books that he wrote. In his first book, Pelle di leopardo (Leopard Hide) (1973), he describes the last phases of the Vietnam War. The following recollection, Giai Phong! The Fall and Liberation of Saigon, recounts the takeover of Vietnam's capital by the Vietcong and the scramble of the last Westerners to escape with American helicopters; he stayed there for some time and witnessed the changes. Two years later he nearly died while trying to document the new "Democratic Kampuchea": the Khmer Rouge tried to execute him after his arrival in the border town of Poipet, and he saved his life only by his knowledge of the Chinese language. In what is perhaps his most well-known book, Un indovino mi disse (A Fortune-Teller Told Me), Terzani describes his travels across Asia by land and sea following the advice and warning from a fortune teller in Hong Kong that he must avoid airplanes for the whole year of 1993. One chapter of the book is entirely dedicated to Ferdynand Ossendowski, Polish traveller. Ryszard Kapuściński wrote about this book "A great book written in the best traditions of literary journalism... profound, rich and reflective". Kapuściński and Terzani shared the same vision of journalism. After 9/11 he wrote Lettere contro la guerra (Letters Against the War). The book was born as a response to the anti-Islamic invectives published by the Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci on the daily Il Corriere della Sera on 29 September 2001. Final work and death In his last book Un altro giro di giostra (One More Ride on the Merry-go-round), in 2001, Terzani deals with his illness, a bowel cancer which eventually led to his death in 2004, but not before he had travelled and searched through countries and civilizations, looking for a cure and for a new vision of life. A short excerpt from his book: "...after a while, the goal of my journey was not the cure for my cancer anymore, but for the sickness which affects all of us: mortality" Terzani spent the early 2000s in confinement on the mountainous Himalayas region, in a small hut that he rented in order to meditate and