- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; Reprint edition (April 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 067972186X
- ISBN-13: 978-0679721864
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.4 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,481,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
Levi writes of unspeakable things with charity, clarity and objectivity (SUNDAY TIMES )
Levi's work is a model of patience and hard-won enlightenment, a search for illumination in places where there appeared to be none. (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
It is, as always, an intellectual and aesthetic pleasure to follow the perfection of style, the manner of exposition, both subtle and lucid. (OBSERVER )
The horror of what he reveals is made all the more terrifying by a prose style which is cool, clear and unsparing. The most powerful message to emerge from this book is that we must learn the lessons of history so as not to repeat its mistakes. (YORKSHIRE POST ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Levi's work is a model of patience and hard-won enlightenment, a search for illumination in places where there appeared to be none. (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
It is, as always, an intellectual and aesthetic pleasure to follow the perfection of style, the manner of exposition, both subtle and lucid. (OBSERVER )
The horror of what he reveals is made all the more terrifying by a prose style which is cool, clear and unsparing. The most powerful message to emerge from this book is that we must learn the lessons of history so as not to repeat its mistakes. (YORKSHIRE POST ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
*Levi's examination of what it meant to have survived the Holocaust.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
HUMAN memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
HUMAN memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book during the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 as I wondered what would happen to the Lebanese I was meeting who had collaborated with the Israeli occupiers. Who exactly was guilty? And how guilty were they?
Levi writes about guilt in the horrific circumstances of the Nazi concentration camp, mulling over those who co-operated with the Nazis (working, eg, as cleaners)if only to extend their lives by a short period. He writes with an astonishing humanity and humility, and with a strange detachment that makes his observations more telling.
Having survived such a hell, he felt the guilt of the 'saved' that he had seen so many 'drown' and he wrote as a man of compassion and wisdom. Levi will make you cry and take you to the depths, but somehow make you feel stronger.
Surely one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Levi once again manages to concisely delve into the topic of the Holocaust. Here he refers to his experiences to confront the deeper issues of life in the Lager and the after effects it had on the survivors, the Saved. It can best be surmised as a collection of essays that address various topics, (including, but not exclusively): the fallacies of memories, prisoners who cooperated with the Nazis, the importance of communication and language in the Lager, the guilt felt by survivors and the response from his German readers. If you have read Levi's autobiographical works, then this is a necessary accompaniment. The only negative thing I have to say about this edition is the review on the back jacket which so firmly states that Levi's death was a suicide, and makes conjectures as to why he did so. His death is a mystery and will always remain as such.(Good content, bad cover!)
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. How many of those that did, I wondered, knew about what he did to European Jewry? Those who do know of the holocaust usually know of little other than Auschwitz but even then only think of it as a railway station with a path to the side that leads to a gas chamber, not as an actual camp where thousands struggled to live what life they were temporarily allowed in order to serve their murderes via forced labour.
Prison stories are always chilling but most think of prison as a place of holding until release, not death. What place does morality, conscience, hygiene and dignity have in a death camp?
Levi's description of camp life in 'Is this a Man'is not as brutal and disturbing as perhaps those related in Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust', the book seems less about the atrocities afflicted on the inmates but on how they survived them and further still retained the spirit and will to continue. In 'The Drowned and the Saved' Levi attempts to understand the German people of the Nazi era. How they endorsed or allowed themselves to be seduced by the Nazi ideology... by greed, vanity and hatred... to turn their backs on morality, truth and basic human goodness. Germany will always be remembered or rather tarnished because of the Nazis, it will always remain as much a part of their history as the Congo atrocities belonged to Leopold's Belgium, Australia's belong with the British and the on-going crimes visited on the Native Americans...
I have not the knowledge or right to really comment on his work or indeed on the work of any survivor. It is not my place even to judge those that commited the crimes. What is important is that I (and others of my age) know of them. For to be ignorant of it is not only a betrayal of those destroyed by it, but a further crime against those who survived it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Purchase of The Drowned and the Saved
A book which gives much food for thought - writiten in an impressive manner by an Itlanian Parmacist who was in a German concentration camp during WW2.
Published 6 months ago by avid reader
Informative and harrowing
Nothing particularly new that I hadn't read or heard of before, but the first-hand experience was very powerful. Read more
Published 11 months ago by D. P. Jenkins
The Gray Zone...
This is Primo Levi's last reflections on the Holocaust. His most famous book, published shortly after his experience in it, is entitled in the English language version, Survival In... Read more
Published 14 months ago by John P. Jones III
Death camp survivor
The author, Primo Levi, tries to understand the rationale behind Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2007 by David I. Howells
How does one survive in a world built to murder you?
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2004
A moving and thought provoking account of the Holocaust
Moving, thought provoking and upsetting. It made me want to read it until I reached the very end without pausing for breath. Read more
Published on 17 Mar 2001
A moving account that somehow fails its purpose
This book envoked mixed emotions. The descriptions of the suffering endured by the prisoners of war is both powerful and deeply upsetting. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2000
A sensitive depiction of the holocaust
Primo Levi's superb and moving account of his experiences of Auschwitz KZ. Now that there seems to be a nascent industry of books and films about this tragic episode in Europe's... Read more
Published on 24 Oct 1999
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