Primo Levi Book order

Levi's account stands out as a pioneering Holocaust testimony, crafted before the genre was formally recognized. It serves as a direct and painstakingly detailed diary, capturing the harrowing experiences of survival in unimaginable conditions. The narrative's straightforwardness enhances its impact, offering readers an unfiltered glimpse into the horrors faced during this dark chapter of history.

Primo Levi's account of life as a concentration camp prisoner falls into two parts. IF THIS IS A MAN describes his deportation to Poland and the twenty months he spend working in Auschwitz. THE TRUCE covers his long journey to Italy at the end of the war through Russia and Central Europe. Levi never raises his voice, complains or attributes blame. By telling his story quietly, objectively and in plain language he renders both the horror and the hope of the situation with absolute clarity. Probing the themes which preoccupy all his writing - work love, power, the nature of things, what it is to be human - he leaves the reader drained, elated, apprehensive. With 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 contemptible

Back, away from here, drowned people, go. I haven't stolen anyone's place' A selection of poetry from the author of If this is a Man and The Periodic Table. From the writer who bore witness to the twentieth century's darkest days, these verses of beauty and horror include the poem that inspired the title of his memoir, If This Is a Man.

In 1945, soon after the liberation of Auschwitz, Soviet authorities in control of the Kattowitz (Katowice) camp in Poland asked Primo Levi and his fellow captive Leonardo De Benedetti to compile a detailed report on the sanitary conditions they witnessed in Auschwitz.

Primo Levi, the Italian-born chemist once described by Philip Roth as that “quicksilver little woodland creature enlivened by the forest’s most astute intelligence,” has largely been considered a heroic figure in the annals of twentieth-century literature for If This Is a Man, his haunting account of Auschwitz. Yet Levi’s body of work extends considerably beyond his experience as a survivor. Now, the transformation of Levi from Holocaust memoirist to one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers culminates in this publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi. This magisterial collection finally gathers all of Levi’s fourteen books—memoirs, essays, poetry, and fiction—into three slip-cased volumes. Thirteen of the books feature new translations, and the other is newly revised by the original translator. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison introduces Levi’s writing as a “triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction.” The appearance of this historic publication will occasion a major reappraisal of “one of the most valuable writers of our time” (Alfred Kazin). The Complete Works of Primo Levi features all new translations of: The Periodic Table, The Drowned and the Saved, The Truce, Natural Histories, Flaw of Form, The Wrench, Lilith, Other People’s Trades, and If Not Now, When?—as well as all of Levi’s poems, essays, and other nonfiction work, some of which have never appeared before in English.

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century. This landmark selection of his short stories opens up a world of wonder, love, cruelty and curious twists of fate, where nothing is as it seems. In The Fugitive' an office worker composes the most beautiful poem ever with unforeseen consequences, while Magic Paint' sees a group of researchers develop a paint that mysteriously protects them from misfortune. Gladiators' and The Knall' are chilling explorations of mass violence, and in `The Tranquil Star' a simple story of stargazing becomes a meditation on language, imagination and infinity.

Among the first written accounts of the concentration camps—a major literary and historical discovery. While in a Russian-administered holding camp in Katowice, Poland, in 1945, Primo Levi was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz. Published the following year, it was subsequently forgotten and remained unknown to a wider public. Dating from the weeks and months immediately after the war, Auschwitz Report details the authors’ harrowing deportation to Auschwitz, and how those who disembarked from the train were selected for work or extermination. As well as being a searing narrative of everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers, it constitutes Levi’s first lucid attempts to come to terms with the raw horror of events that would drive him to create some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature and testimony. Auschwitz Report is a major literary and historical discovery.

'He was blamed for endless disasters, from failed exams to a bridge collapse, an avalanche, even a shipwreck: all due, in the stupid opinion of, first, his fellow-students and, later, his colleagues, to the penetrating power of his evil eye...' Profound and compassionate, Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing literary voices to emerge from the twentieth century. Whether describing the most beautiful poem ever composed or an invention gone horribly wrong, these eight exquisitely wrought stories open up a rich, fantastical world of wonder, adventure and cruel twists of fate, where nothing is as it seems. This book contains The Magic Paint, The Death of Marinese, Censorship in Bitinia, Knall, Gladiators, The Fugitive, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Buffet Dinner

Focusing on the Holocaust, this collection of Levi's writings intertwines his personal experiences in Auschwitz with his reflections as a writer and chemist. He passionately critiques the diminishing compassion and skepticism surrounding Holocaust testimonies, emphasizing the importance of remembering these atrocities. For Levi, writing serves as a crucial means to comprehend the Holocaust and preserve the collective memory of the Jewish people's suffering, standing against the erosion of truth and moral accountability.

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. A highly educated Jewish Italian, Primo Levi achieved world-wide fame with his first book, If This is a Man: an objective account of his struggle for survival following imprisonment in Auschwitz in 1943. Taken from his great work The Periodic Table, these stories describe his training as a chemist in wartime Turin against a backdrop of growing anti-Semitism.