Robert Katz
is the author of twelve books and eight screenplays, including three
adaptations from his own works: Death in
Rome, The Cassandra Crossing, and Days
of Wrath. (List of publications
and films attached.)
Death in Rome, which the Chicago
Tribune called a “masterpiece of literature [and] a masterpiece of
historical scholarship,” was a worldwide bestseller published in nineteen
editions and ten languages. A
study of the World War II Ardeatine Caves Massacre, it became an international
cause célèbre culminating in a ten‑year freedom‑of‑speech
court battle involving the Vatican.
Days of Wrath is an investigative report on the terrorist
kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the Italian statesman.
Reviewing Days of Wrath, the Washington
Post wrote: “anyone who can be moved by the pity and terror of a modern
tragedy will want to read this original and passionately heartfelt book.”
The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; the film version won a
Golden Globe and represented Italy in the main competition of the 1987 Berlin
Film Festival, where it received a Silver Bear award.
A long-time resident of Italy, Mr. Katz
has written extensively on Italian themes, particularly on modern and
contemporary history. His Black Sabbath, a national bestseller in Italy, is a Holocaust study
of the deportation of the Jews of Rome. In
1994, he was a consultant to the team of American TV journalists that located
former SS officer Erich Priebke living in Argentina; Mr. Katz’s coverage of
the case and Priebke’s trial in Rome was the subject of his 1997 book Dossier
Priebke. His most recent
publication, “Pius XII Protests the Holocaust,” is part of the popular
historical anthology series What If?2:
Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, and forthcoming from Simon
and Schuster in 2003 is his latest work, Rome,
Open City, a re-examination in the light of a wealth of new documents of the
Nazi occupation of Rome
A Rome
connection to a contemporary murder case that rocked the New York art world, led
to Mr. Katz's post-trial investigation of the affair.
The 1990 book, Naked By The Window:
The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta, was published to critical
acclaim. The
New York Times, for example, wrote: “[Katz's] engrossing book lingers long
after one has turned the last page....completely absorbing” and USA
Today said, “it does to its subject what true-crime books rarely do:
justice.”
Mr. Katz’s
articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the
world. He has been a
consultant to CBS’s 60 Minutes,
ABC’s PrimeTime Live and Italian
television's RAI network news magazine, Mixer.
Both as
author and screenwriter, Mr. Katz has been a guest lecturer on many university
campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Between
1986 and 1992, he was a frequent visiting professor in investigative
journalism at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Fellow of the
Adlai E. Stevenson College. He is
also a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, a former grantee of the
American Council of Learned Societies and has twice been elected a Knight of
Mark Twain. In 1991 he was inducted
into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mr. Katz is
married to Beverly Gerstel and lives in Tuscany.
*
* *
By
Robert Katz
Nonfiction
Death in Rome (Macmillan, 1967); U.K. (Jonathan
Cape), Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Brazil.
Black Sabbath: A Journey Through a Crime Against
Humanity (Macmillan, 1969; U.K.(Arthur Barker) and Italy.
The Fall of the House of Savoy
(Macmillan, 1971); U.K.(Allen & Unwin), Italy.
A Giant in the Earth
(Stein & Day, 1973).
Days of Wrath: The Ordeal of Aldo Moro
(Doubleday, 1980); U.K. (Granada), Italy, Japan.
Il caso Moro (Pironti, 1987) (with G. Ferrara
& A. Balducci)
Love is Colder than Death: The Life & Times of
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Random House; 1987; U.K.(Jonathan Cape), France,
Spain, Brazil.
Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre
and Ana Mendieta (Atlantic Monthly
Press, 1990).
Dossier Priebke: Anatomia di un processo
(Rizzoli, 1997).
Rome, Open City (Coming: Simon &
Schuster, 2003; U.K. (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson).
Fiction
The Cassandra Crossing
(Ballantine, 1977; U.K. Pan Books, France, Spain, Italy, Japan).
Ziggurat (Houghton Mifflin, 1977; U.K.:
Eyre Methuen).
The Spoils of Ararat
(Houghton Mifflin, 1978; U.K.: Sphere).
Films
Massacre in Rome (1973).
The Cassandra Crossing
(1977).
La Pelle (1981).
The Salamander (1981).
Kamikaze ‘89 (1982).
Hotel Colonial (1983).
The Moro Affair (Il caso Moro)
(1986).
Blood Ties (1986)
Selected Articles
“Pius
XII Protests the Holocaust,” What If?2:
Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (anthology,
R. Cowley, ed., New York: Putnam, 2001; U.K. 2002).
“Priebke:
The Last Nazi Trial,” MHQ, Summer
1996.
“The
Education of an Assassin,” The New York
Times, April 23, 1994.
“Life
in the Abstract,” The New York Times
Book Review, August 1, 1993.
"Octopus:
The Long Reach of the Sicilian Mafia" The
Washington Post, 1991.
“Not
a Pretty Picture,” Esquire, April
1991.
“A
Family Affair: The Tavianis,” American
Film, June 1987.
“Fear
Ate His Soul: Rainer Werner Fassbinder,” American
Film,” July-August 1985.