Meet the author at the literary salon "La Linea d'Ombra. Roma". To participate, please email lalineadombra.roma@gmail.com

Miguel Gotor
"L'omicidio di Piersanti Mattarella"
Einaudi, 2025

Meet the author at the literary salon "La Linea d'Ombra. Roma". To participate, please email lalineadombra.roma@gmail.com

On January 6, 1980, Sicilian Regional President Piersanti Mattarella, considered Aldo Moro's political heir, was assassinated. Following the acquittal of neo-fascists Valerio Fioravanti and Gilberto Cavallini in 1999, only the Mafia instigators of the murder are known, but not the perpetrators, and an investigation to identify them is still ongoing.

Miguel Gotor begins with the Mattarella murder to embark on a disturbing journey through the layers of Italian power, focusing on the "hybrid marriages" between neo-fascism, occult Freemasonry, the Mafia, and deviant state apparatuses. The research also delves into the connections between the Mattarella murder and the Ustica and Bologna massacres of a few months later, against the backdrop of a profoundly changing international landscape due to the United States and NATO's decision to deploy cruise missiles in Sicily against Libya and the Soviet Union. The author approaches, with rigorous historical method and a compelling style, the context in which Mattarella's assassination unfolded, highlighting themes and turning points that still impact the history of our country. This is an important book on the Italy of yesterday that speaks to the Italy of today and its crisis.

Miguel Gotor (Rome, 1971) teaches at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He was a fellow at Villa I Tatti. The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and a senator of the Republic from 2013 to 2018. He specializes in saints, heretics, and inquisitors between the 16th and 17th centuries and in Italian history in the 1970s. His publications include I beati del papa. Santità, Inquisizione e obbedienza in età moderna (2002) and Santi stravaganti. Agiografia, ordini religiosi e censura ecclesiastica nella prima età moderna (2012). For Einaudi, he edited Lettere dalla prigionia di Aldo Moro (Viareggio Prize for Nonfiction 2008), Enrico Berlinguer's collection of writings, La passione non è finita (2013), and published Il memoriale della Repubblica. Gli scritti di Aldo Moro dalla prigionia e l'anatomia del potere italiano (2011), L'Italia nel Novecento. Dalla sconfitta di Adua alla vittoria di Amazon (2019 and 2021), and Generazione Settanta. Storia del decennio piú lungo del secolo breve 1966-1982 (2022 and 2024).