On March 16, 1978 Aldo Moro, former Italian Prime Minister, was ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed all five members of his escort and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the Red Brigades announced that Moro was in their hands; on March 18 they said he would be tried in a 'people's court of justice'. Seven weeks later Moro's body was discovered in the boot of a Renault parked in the crowded centre of Rome. In The Moro Affair, Leonardo Sciascia - a master of detective fiction - untangles the real-life events of these crucial weeks and provides a unique insight into the dangerous world of Italian politics in the 1970s.

On March 16, 1978 Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister of Italy, was ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed his escort and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the terrorist group the Red Brigades announced that Moro was in their hands; on March 18 they said he would be tried in a "people's court of justice." Seven weeks later Moro's body was discovered in the trunk of a car parked in the crowded center of Rome. The Moro Affair presents a chilling picture of how a secretive government and a ruthless terrorist faction help to keep each other in business. Also included in this book is "The Mystery of Majorana," Sciascia's fascinating investigation of the disappearance of a major Italian physicist during Mussolini's regime.

Aldo Moro's kidnapping and violent death in 1978 had much the same effect in Italy as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy had in the U.S., with both cases giving rise to endless conspiracy theories. Drake provides a detailed portrait of the tragedy and its aftermath as complex symbols of a turbulent age in Italian history.

Body of State offers a critical perspective on the Moro Affair and on Marco Baliani's work. With contributions from scholars, theater practitioners, teachers, and students, it constitutes a unique resource for disciplines that train on the intersection of art and politics. The relevance of the topic raise the interest of the audience as well.

On March 16, 1978, the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, and what followed—the fifty-five days of captivity that resulted in Moro's murder—constitutes one of the most striking social dramas of the twentieth century. In this compelling study of terrorism, Robin Wagner-Pacifici employs methods from sociology, symbolic anthropology, and literary criticism to decode the many social "texts" that shaped the event: political speeches, newspaper reports, television and radio news, editorials, photographs, Moro's letters, Red Brigade communiques, and appeals by various international figures. The analysis of these "texts" calls into question the function of politics, social drama, spectacle, and theater. Wagner-Pacifici provides a dramaturgic analysis of the Moro affair as a method for discussing the culture of politics in Italy.