Primo Levi Books

I have just finished reading Levi's book, If This Is a Man. It was picked as one of the best books of the 20th centurey by the Folio Society of Great Britain, and having read it, I know why. It is a dispassionate but not emotionless, account of one man's experience in one of the Auschwitz satellite camps, from capture in Italy to the coming of the Russians. The book is frightening but never seeks to more than describe the actual events. Could this happen again? Of course. Should it happen? Never. The book has to be a must-read for anyone concerned with the world in which we live, and the world in which we and our childen COULD live.

If you are a man, no matter if you're jew or german or whatever else, you cannot read this book emotionless. This is something so strong words are not enough to describe it. Nobody must forget, nobody must repeat what's so honestly described in this pages. Primo Levi committed suicide 40 years later, never able to chase those days off his days and nights. We owe him and everybody who suffered that atrocity at least the promise to keep on reading his testimony,generation after generation, no matter our race, religion or gender.

I've never really invested any thought in the holocaust before reading this book. Levi's testimony has changed all that. His sober view of the concentration camps and the war have made this book one of the selected few which have truly changed the way I think. It has been an honor and a pleasure reading it. I can offer no guarantee others will feel the same way I did, only my humble and sincere recommendation of this book.

If I had to nominate one book from the 20th century to give to a person from another century it would be this one. The two books in this single volume complement eachother perfectly. They are so different and yet I cannot say which is the better book. I have tried for several weeks to write a few paragraphs to sell this book to any would-be reader, but nothing I can say can convey the extraordinary personality of the writer. Reading If This Is A Man was a humbling experience in a way that no other book or movie I have encountered in my life has been.

People sometimes suggest that the Holocaust is old news, part of a long ago past. The day after I finished Levi's book I heard five English soccer fans singing songs about Belsen, imitating the sound of gas escaping and yelling "turn on the shower" - and laughing. I've debated with educated Americans who believe the Holocaust was exaggerated and that most of the deaths were caused by disease. One in seven French voters support a man who is in Holocaust denial. Perhaps these people would not be changed by this book, but I hope that a hundred years from now millions of people will still be reading Primo Levi and learning from this sad, brave, modest man.

Reading this book filled me with sorrow and horror. I was prepared for the horror but did not expect the crawling sadness of this impassive tale of improbable survival, of days and months of fear, hunger and torment that I devoured in astonishement but digested with a lot more difficulty. That there were millions of human beings that went through such systematic torture and annihilation and that this whole torment was inflicted by man. That others (all of us) should quickly declare it an aberration and fail to relate to it. Primo Levi talks of a nightmare common among concentration camp prisoners: they are telling their story to people from home, people outside the camps and no one is listening. Reading Levi's tale of survival and lengthy repatriation, we come to understand the need for telling this extraordinaty experience. It is said that those survivors who chose not to talk were those who could not reconcile the shame and misery of the camp experience with their condition as human beings. They tried in vain to suppress a memory they could not assimilate. Others, like Levi, maitained the belief in his humanity as well as in that of every other man. Fot this, he claims, the extermination camp experience touches us all. 'If This Is a Man' made me realize once and for all that it is extemely important that we know, that we relate to what happened. For every victim of insane hatred and violence and for humanity's sake.

If This Is a Man offers a powerful glimpse into life in a concentration camp. It is emotional as well as inforamtive.

Primo Levi is the most insightful, pragmatic realist of all holocaust authors. I have read more than 50 books on the subject, and his insights into what happened, human nature, the (bad) luck of the draw, and the tragedy of his experience are brilliant and by far the most articulate. Somehow, perhaps with his scientific mind, Levi was able to maintain his awareness through an experience that is utterly beyond the scope of imagination. He somehow emerges from the ashes of this horrific epoch like a literary phoenix. He doesn't dwell on the inhuman acts and suffering, although he has a perfect right to do so, but instead offers his account almost from an omniscient perspective. This book contains the best of Primo Levi, but his other writings demand to be read as well. And, if you haven't seen The Truce, starring John Turturro, you should do so. It's not a hundred percent historically accurate, but it is a great presentation.

It's been a while since I read this book. My girlfriend pulled it off my shelf of her own accord, and she's reading it now. It's one of those books that every thinking person should read. Other reviewers have conveyed its gist very well. It's not really like other Holocaust literature, as important as that school is. It's more concerned with the capability of human beings to absolutely degrade one another. Auschwitz is a stewpot in which the worst of human nature bubbles to the top and sets the bar.

One would think the average camp prisoner would have put his head down numbly and hoped to get out alive. Levi somehow was able to observe and work through the ramifications of nearly every aspect of camp life, not with numbness, but with serene clarity (at least as he writes it later). Everything related in this book is literal and symbolic, mundane and profound, degraded yet fundamental. Levi doesn't spare himself, either. As he put it, to die in Auschwitz, all one had to do was play by the rules. He cheated, stole, and turned his back on his fellows in order to stay alive, and no fellow prisoner who knew the rules of Auschwitz would have held it against him. So much for uniting against one's oppressors.

I should add that "The Truce" tells the story of Levi's very circuitous journey home from Poland to Italy, through a post-war Europe that was barely functional on any level. It is less bleak by far than "If This Is A Man", but the insights into human nature are similiarly profound and essential.

A truly amazing book - I cannot promise that you will enjoy it, in fact I can almost guarantee that you will find most of it heart-breaking and painful.

It is a little like watching Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing - on many levels you do not enjoy it but it enthrals you. The subject matter is so important and it is so beautifully made and eloquent that you feel compelled to watch (or read in the case of Levi).

Levi tells the story of his own internment in Auschwitz - he concentrates on the details of everyday life slowing building a vivid picture of how the Nazis were intent on not just killing them but breaking their spirit, humiliating them, degrading them. He captures many moments so well that they live on in the mind, for example when he describes how the terrible regime made Jew turn on Jew. He even manages to raise a guilty smile occasionally. For example, he describes the second worst thing that could happen at night was to take out the toilet bucket as it was always full to overflowing and would spill on your feet. The worst thing was when your bunkmate took it out as they shared bunks sleeping head to toe.

Levi is a fantastic writer (try the Periodic Table if you want to read something easier and more enjoyable) with a light touch. He describes his time in Auschwitz calmly, clearly, with great compassion but remarkably objectively; he gives the reader space to think and understand.

A work of heart-breaking genius

A truly wonderful book by a great author. In this volume you get Levi's If This Is a Man, his story of his trials in one of the satellite camps of Auschwitz, and The Truce, the story of his long journey from Auschwitz back home to Turin. In the "Afterword" included with this edition (Abacus edition of 1987) you also have Levi's answers to the questions his readers had posed to him over the years. These are also revealing.

I've read many books about the Holocaust and WWII. I could not put this one down. I picked this up after reading Levi's The Periodic Table (also excellent). Here, Levi bears witness to the horrors of the Lager system of Nazi Germany. He is very specific about bearing witness. This is not a history or a commentary, though he does give his opinions. You can't call this a memoir really: it is testimony. In The Truce, he describes the long, strange journey he took back to Italy, through Poland, Russia, Bjelorus, Ukraine, Rumania, Hungary, Austria, and Germany, in the care of, mostly, the Russians. This is also a fascinating tale and follows on naturally: If This Is a Man ends with the arrival of the Russians to liberate the Auschwitz Lager and you want to know how he gets home and gets on with his life.

Levi is a master story teller. You just want to keep reading and hear what will happen next. He was obviously a very intelligent man. These books are very restrained and humane, towards all the people in them, even the evil-doing Germans. Levi states that he does not want revenge and doesn't hate the Germans. His concern is that civilized people everywhere do not allow this to happen again. (We've let him down there: Cambodia, Myanmar, Rwanda, The Balkans, Darfur, ...)

I've read numerous books on the Holocaust, and I find some of them just too tough (emotionally) to read (especially after my kids came along), for example The Nazi Doctors. Levi tells you the bad stuff but somehow makes it bearable and a thoroughly wonderful read.

When I finished this book, I was very moved by my admiration for the humanity of Levi (not to mention the wonderful writing.) I kept repeating to myself, "that was a real man ..."

I enjoy being older and having time to pursue the books I would like to read rather than have to read. I only discovered Primo Levi by seeing his name mentioned in reference to another author. And to think I might have missed this man's talent out of pure ignorance. What a shame there aren't many more of his works available, cut off by his depression and taking his life. Book quality excellent. Content of Levi's story exquisite.

This little memoir humanizes Levi's Auschwitz acquaintances, presenting them not merely as victims sitting around waiting to be gassed, but as lively, interesting people engaged in the full-time business of getting enough food to survive.

This book is lovely, but it is worth pointing out that it revisits characters that Levi has written in about in his previous memoirs, and is much more satisfying as an appendix than a freestanding work. The chapters on Cesare and Lorenzo gain a great deal of depth if one has already read If This Is a Man and The Truce, where the two are major characters. (These two books have unfortunately been re-titled in America, with complete inaccuracy and for mysterious reasons, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening.)

Also, unlike The Periodic Table, which is also a collection of stories (and I think one of the best books of the 20th century), Moments of Reprieve is not designed to be a unified work of art. The stories were written under a variety of impulses, and most are individually brilliant and moving, but they do not gain strength from being around each other. The last chapter ("The Story of a Coin") about Rumkowski, even appears again -- with no changes as far as I could tell -- in The Drowned and the Saved, Levi's last completed book.

For anyone wanting to discover Levi's writing, I would suggest beginning with The Periodic Table, If This is a Man, and The Truce. Also wonderful are his single novel (If Not Now, When?) and his poetry. This collection, while not essential, serves as a worthy addition to his greatest work. It is also a testament to his artistry, because it shows how much he consciously left out of If This is a Man and The Truce -- stories that a lesser writer would have scrambled to include -- to create the unified, devastating impression of those two books.

Eventually, though, after reading those other great books, you will end up here, because I know of no one who has read them sincerely that has not wanted to spend more time in the company of this smart, funny, wise, and radiantly decent person.

it was recommended by a good friend of mine to read a certain book by this author. i couldn't get my hands on the book recommended, but i decided to try this one at random. i was not disappointed. i thought this book was excellent. it is full of short stories about several people who levi remembers from his time in auschwitz. it is not a heavy book about the holocaust, it is a collection of interesting stories about people who briefly touched his life in some way. his voice and his style are unique, and his stories are thoughtful and intriguing. i feel like i've seen a glimpse of his personality and the personalities of the characters he has written about. i have since read the sixth day; quite a stretch from this one, but just as beautiful. i highly recommend both.

Primo Levi's collection of short stories provides a strange and provocative exploration of science and life. It compels the reader to think about familiar things in unfamiliar ways. The Sixth Day is extraordinary.

This collection of stories is both intellectual, funny and poignant, and deserves reading at least once by anyone who values good writing and food for thought. Each story is different, but all resonate with a deep sympathy for the human condition and a gentle humour that willplace Levi within the range of anyone's favourite authors

this book is obviously fiction, but his style of writing so matter-of-factly makes these dreamed up stories so tangible. most of levi's work is non-fiction, autobiographical, always in first person. however, although still in first person, the sixth day is a subtle stretch from the rest of levi's work. like some kind of autobiographical sci-fi, almost believable, until you realize that what he's writing about is pretty unlikely, if not impossible. the book is full of several very original ideas, some of which totally blew me away. i recommend this book to any levi fan, anyone who enjoys a little intelligent escapism, or anyone just looking to read some excellent creative writing. a friend of mine turned me on to levi's writing, recommending this book specifically. it took me awhile to find it, so i ended up first reading another of his, titled "moments of reprieve", which was also great.

The editors point out that talking - giving interviews, speaking in schools, etc. - was almost a third career for Levi, after his work in SIVA and as a writer. The interviews included in this collection show what a good talker he was.

Most important, perhaps, there is a good deal here that does not appear in Levi's better known works, and which rightfully cause us to think more deeply about the complexity of his thought and life. For example, his conclusion in _The Drowned and the Saved_ that "the worst survived; that is, the fittest; the best of all died," has become an archetype of Levi in his last years. Readers may be surprised to read that in 1986, as he was completing _Drowned and Saved_ , Levi also said: "To be a mensch was a factor in survival," although "not every survivor was a mensch." Fortunately, perhaps, Levi also said that year (in his interview with Philip Roth), "Please grant me the right to inconsistency."

In granting Levi the right to inconsistency we honor him most of all. No one described better than he how quickly human complexity becomes oversimplified. This book is a valuable antidote to the ways that has happened in the story most often told about Levi himself.

Primo Levi is one of the great literary witnesses of the Shoah. He is also a remarkable literary figure, and the self- described centaur who is composed of a scientific, work, chemist side, and a literary, poetic side. These interviews in which he discusses the Shoah( The Holocaust) his experiences, and his witness, his writing, his relation to his Jewishness, his relation to many beloved writers of his enriches our sense of the man and his work. His calm reassuring moral voice is the voice of one who has seen much and been able to tell its story. At the end of the interviews there is a sense of weariness , and a sense of having said it all. There too is a feeling that the younger generation no longer can really sense what he is saying, as the younger generation could after the war. Levi is a truly poetic and deep soul, but exact as a scientist and a therefore seemingly a most reliable witness. His finding human dignity in simple work is another major theme of his work and life. And his modest, practical and realistic answers ( for instance to the question of why he did not distribute food found and made at the point of liberation to three thousand prisoners when he was with ten who ate the food and were kept alive by it) shows his awareness of his own human limitation and fundamental decency.
One caveat. The very leftist interviewers in the Jewish section seem to go out of their way to make Levi criticize Israel for its 1982 effort to stop terrorism coming at it from Lebanon. Levi is critical of Israel but only to a certain point, and does not fall into the trap of condemning the Jewish state. After all he knows what it is to be attacked as a Jew and he understands that the Jewish state is fighting for its survival.
All in all this is a wonderful set of interviews with one of the great voices of conscience of the twentieth century.

Primo Levi{of Blessed memory], was one of the great writers of the past half century. Memoirs{survival at Auschwitz},fiction{the monkeys wrench,If not now, when] essayist[The Drowned and the saved, his magum opus} and Reawkenings, his description of life from the liberation of the camps until he finds his way back to his beloved Turin, Italy[where he lived ,save those years in the camps, all his life. A chemist by trade,amy believe his best work to be THe Periodic Table, whre he begins each "story" named after one of the elements. I have read all of Mr. levi, and he is one of the few, very very few, writers or people that I hold in awe.I have two earlier collection of interviews that he gave,though none carries the sheer inclusiveness of this collection.These interviews take place over a 26 year period,and are grouped into specific catergories.Part 1 is ENGLISH ENCOUNTERS,interviews in Englan, with English new agencies or with English writers. Part 2 isLIFE,interviews about Mr. levis life.Part 3 is BOOKS, interviews regarding Mr. levis published works.Part 4 is LITERATURE and WRITING,interviews regarding the art and craft.Part 5 is AUSCHWITZ and SURVIVAL,a group of interviews and one essay, the preface to IF THIS IS A MAN, what is my favorite non fiction among Mr levis work. Part 6 is JUDAISM and ISRAEL,a series of thoughtful,painful hopeful interviews on the subject,perhaps all the more relevant and poignant due to the recent neverending hatred going on there on both sides.How i wish to hear Mr levi's calm gentle words on the current state of things. The astonishing thing that I carried from these interviews was Mr Levis lack of bitterness or rancor. The coda, of course is that Mr levi commited suicide in 1987,at last a victim to the HOLOCAUST which he so valiantly fought to memory. At lifes end, he found himself forgetting details of his life{early alzheimers?} and was forgetting his time in the camps,was forced to read and re-read to remember what he had just read. In the drowned and the saved,he speaks of the growing movement to de sacralize the holocaust, to downplay its uniqueness, and how the guards at the capms would taunt him by tellig him"no one will believe you, or remember." Thanks to people like Primo Levi, that will not happen. A brillaint absolutely essential book by a good and great man.HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

A really wonderful biography on a complex man. Kudos to the author. I'm impressed.

A highly enjoyable book. Thomson paints an extremely detailed picture but does not attempt to create a mythic figure out of Levi. He is presented in 3 dimensions with all his strengths and weaknesses. Extremely rich look at the assimilated Jewish community of Turin suddenly being cast as the enemy of the Fascist state. Highly recommended.

Risa Sodi is to be complimented on the eloquence and perspicacity of her work. The comparison between Levi and Dante is brilliantly conceived and amply supported by the thoroughness of the author's readings and research.

Am not much of a fan of the stuff--movies, books, whatever--spawned by the Holocaust. Don't much even like writing that word with a capital h. The work of two recent Jewish Nobel Prizewinners--Bellow, Singer--seems wildly overrated to me. And I don't care much for P. Roth, Malamud, and several other Jewish writers with huge reputations in the States. Finally, just about everything the state of Israel does annoys me to no end, and when I see Israeli bulldozers uprooting ancient olive trees to make room for a so-called security fence, I find myself tempted to don an explosive belt and join the Intifada. Or, at the very least, chuck a few rocks at Israeli soldiers.

So, without ever having read any of it, I naturally viewed Levi's work with distrust for a long time. But "Lilít" is a wonderful collection. True, moving, and generous. Why my preconceived notions about Levi's work should be "natural" is part of what he examines here and in other works, though he rarely does so explicitly. In any case, I was ashamed of my earlier dismissal, ignorant and prejudiced, of his work.

The collection is also great for the beginning Italian student. The language is simple and clear and the stories short. Somewhere or other, Levi compares somebody's prose to one of those Piedmontese streams where the water is so clear you can see through it to the bed of multicolored pebbles. He was writing about somebody else, but also, I suspect, about himself.

hilariously insightful; primo levi doesn't usually strike across as a fantasy writer, nonetheless, his un-apologetic personality comes through these intricate stories, written to reflect various avenue in the nature of human beings.

A monotone, sort of scientific voice. His story is sad...but is told with very little emotion. It was hard to get into - a little harder to read due to the "scientist' type voice that I'm not used to. I found Elie Weisel's "Night" to be a much more candid look inside a survivor's haunted soul. Primo Levi is good for someone who prefers reading something about the Holocaust that is a bit more textbook vs. memoir.

Excellant book, I felt like I was living Mr Levi's life in the camp with him. What a wonderful story of survival.

A touching, but not mawkish or dramatic, memoir. One realizes the randomness and happenstance by which he survived, and easily accepts the moral dualism of the life of thievery and connivance, within bounds of common decency and collective group self-interest, that kept any survivor alive. Some reviews seemed to fault the book for being unemotional, but one sees how Levi's essentially scientific and objective personality became a key to his survival, and necessarily informs his voice.

This book from bnpublishing contains serious multiple errors, sometimes five per page, that disrespect the author and the Holocaust and force the reader to stop and try to figure out the author's real meaning. Book is full of incorrect or missing punctuation (such as periods), words and names spelled different ways from one sentence to the next, random capitalization, run-on sentences, grammatical and spelling errors in English, French, and German. "Figfit" is not a word. Neither are "infaticable," "aroupd," or "mochery." The phrase is "flash of intuition," not "flask." The sign over every concentration camp was "Arbeit Macht Frei," not "Fret." You say, "avec moi," which means "with me," not "avec mot" which means "with word." Phrases like "there were no dark cold air had the smell" (p. 107) stop the reader dead. Very disrespectful of the author and the subject. Levi was a brilliant man with astounding powers of observation and recall for his hellish experiences. His words deserve to be preserved better than this.

This account of the imprisonment, internment, survival of Primo Levi in Auschwitz is written as a straightforward chronological narrative. Levi recounts his initial capture , the horrendous suffering of the journey of Italian Jews to Auschwitz, the selection there in which all the woman and children were immediately sent to their deaths in the gas- chambers, and in which the able- bodied sent to the work- camp at Buna. Levi tells the story , detail by detail of his getting into the work- order of the Camp. He describes in clear precise language the horrible humiliations the prisoners were subject to. He also describes in one central chapter, four different kinds of survivors, and the strategies they use to escape death. His accounts of his own getting through to the liberation include his appreciations of his friend Albert, and a few other individuals who with no reward to expect for it, helped him on the way.
The bestiality of the Nazis and their helpers is not sermonized about, but rather portrayed in specific incidents of unusual terrible cruelty.
Levi is deeply concerned with the whole question of what it means to be human , and how it is possible to retain human dignity in the most extreme circumstances.
His carefully written record of his own horrifying experience is to this day considered one of the most moving and effective of Holocaust memoirs.