Primo Levi

"Tony Blair has it all: power, success, flair, an adoring family and a face for every occasion. Admired in the US, grudgingly respected in the EU, this self-styled saviour of the world bounces back from any crisis, slur or scandal with an unfazed shrug even his enemies can only admire. Having single-handedly rebranded the Labour Party, he took Britain into an arguably illegal war in Iraq, provoking hostility both at home and abroad, and saw his own name become synonymous with 'liar' - yet he cruised through another general election to win a historic third term in office. Is it skill, cunning or just sheer luck that has since seen him bag the Olympics for London, stamp his mark on the latest G8 meeting and steady the country after the 2005 London bombings?"--Jacket.

The author's survival in Auschwitz and his travels through Eastern Europe and Russia are the subjects of this memoir.

"The Search for Roots is an anthology of writings that Primo Levi considered to be essential reading. Beginning with the Book of Job, that drama of the just oppressed by injustice, these thirty pieces, with introductions by Levi, reflect his profound knowledge of science and deep passion for literature, and his survival of Auschwitz, making it a collection that is both universal and poignantly autobiographical. The book demonstrates the breadth of Levi's interests and sympathies, from miniature science-fiction narratives to poetry and technical papers. The title suggests a rather strenuous endeavor, but everything here is marked by a quiet authority."--BOOK JACKET.

This book describes Primo Levi's experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camp alive. The average life expectancy of a new entry was three months. This truly amazing story offers a revealing glimpse into the realities of the Holocaust and its effects on our world. - Back cover.

In the final days of World War II, a band of Jewish partisans makes its way from Russia to Italy, moving toward the ultimate goal of Palestine. Based on a true story, the novel chronicles their adventures as they wage a personal war of revenge against the Nazis: blowing up trains, rescuing the last victims of concentration camps, scoring victories in the face of unspeakable devastation. Primo Levi captures the landscape and the people of Eastern Europe in vivid detail, depicting as well the terrible bleakness of war-ridden Europe. But finally, what he gives us is a tribute to the strength and ingenuity of the human spirit.

In conversations in Turin from 1982 to 1986, "Levi spoke of the war, of anti-Semitism, of the camps, of the German guilt, of the emergence of Israel, and of his own extraordinary life and his extraordinary work."--Cover.

A construction worker named Libertini Faussone and the writer-chemist narrator swap stories of their adventures.

The Black Hole of Auschwitz brings together Levi’s writings on the Holocaust and his experiences of the concentration camp, as well as those on his own accidental status as a writer and his chosen profession of chemist. In this book Levi rails intelligently and eloquently against what he saw as the ebb of compassion and interest in the Holocaust, and the yearly assault on the veracity and moral weight of the testimonies of its survivors. For Levi, to keep writing and, through writing, to understand why the Holocaust could happen, was nothing less than a safeguard against the loss of a collective memory of the atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish people. This moving book not only reveals the care and conviction with which he wrote about the Holocaust, but also shows the range of Levi’s interests and the skill, thoughtfulness and sensitivity he brought to all his subjects. The consistency and moral force of Levi’s reflections and the clarity and intimacy of his style will make this book appeal to a wide readership, including those who have read and been moved by his masterpiece If This is a Man.

9-10th grade

A vision of the author's life, including his life in the concentration camps, as seen through the kaleidoscope of chemistry.

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.

Plus de cinquante textes - articles, essais, préfaces, notes - dans lesquels le rescapé poursuit sa réflexion sur les camps de concentration, sur le révisionnisme, sur le racisme, le terrorisme, etc. L'ensemble constitue, comme l'écrit l'éditeur, une sorte "d'autobiographie à la fois scientifique, littéraire, politique et morale" car comme le proclame Primo Levi, ce "désir primordial et violent de raconter" la Shoah ne l'a "pas quitté" (p. 182) ni la certitude que "juger est nécessaire mais difficile" (p. 146). [SDM].

"During the course of more than twenty-five years, Primo Levi gave over two hundred newspaper, journal, radio, and television interviews, speaking with figures as varied as Philip Roth and Germaine Greer. Thirty-six of the most important of these interviews - selected by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon, with many translated into English for the first time - appear in The Voice of Memory.". "We recognize here the familiar voice of Levi's masterpieces, from Survival in Auschwitz to The Drowned and the Saved. But we also encounter a fuller, more complex picture of the writer who was famously shrouded in his past. We see Levi the Holocaust witness alongside Levi the writer, the chemist, the intellectual, the polemicist, and the atheist and Jew, embracing his Jewish culture as he rejects a faith he could not share.". "Levi stunningly emerges in a rich, contradictory, and essentially human light - he was a classic figure out of place. As he himself states, "I am an amphibian, a centaur . . . I live with this paranoiac split." Perhaps the most important of the Holoaust's survivor-writers, Levi's stature is still further enhanced by the remarkable voices speaking in this remarkable book."--BOOK JACKET.