Description
Book SynopsisWith the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi''s writing isn''t just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I''ve ever known - PHILIP ROTH
Trade ReviewThe death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers . . . One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice * Guardian *
Levi's voice is especially affecting, so clear, firm and gentle, yet humane and apparently untouched by anger, bitterness or self-pity.
If This Is a Man is miraculous, finding the human in every individual who traverses its pages, whether a
Häftling (prisoner) or
Muselmann ("the weak, the inept, those doomed to selection"), a kapo or a guard. * Philippe Sands *
With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose... One of the greatest human testaments of the era * Philip Roth *
There are other Holocaust testimonies, but Levi's is the first, and the most focused... Written before the genre existed, it reads more straightforwardly like a record... It is a meticulously presented diary of hell * David Baddiel *
[What] gave it such power... was the sheer, unmitigated truth of it; the sense of what a book could achieve in terms of expanding one's own knowledge and understanding at a single sitting... few writers have left such a legacy... A necessary book * Independent *
A life-changing book * Daily Express *
Among the best literature of the twentieth century * Atlantic *
A powerful reminder of what it means to be human * The Conversation *
The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers...One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice * GUARDIAN *
A life-changing book. * Daily Express *
THE TRUCE: * 'One of the century's truly necessary books.’ *
Philip Roth * 'One of the greatest human testaments of the era.’ *
