In the mid-1960s, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Perfomed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Chernton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade was made into a film by British director Peter Brook. The weaving of space, time, plot, real and imagined characters, sexual liberation, and surrealist imagery made Marat/Sade a sensation. Little did audiences realize that this counterculture play was actually written by a German Jew. The then practically unknown Peter Weiss (1916-82) was also at work on a play about Auschwitz - The Investigation - which is one of the most significant literary treatments of the subject. Both plays, plus The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body are included in this volume.