by Ian Thomson
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by Primo Levi
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by Primo Levi
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by Irene Nemirovsky
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by Trudi Tate
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Review
Carole Angier's biography of Primo Levi is a monument to the tortured life and brilliant work of one of Italy's and the 20th century's most distinguished writers. Born into a Jewish family in Turin in 1919, Levi was physically slight and painfully shy. At university he immersed himself in the study of chemistry which, he felt, could not be 'distorted by ideology, rhetoric and lies' - unlike the Fascism which was beginning to take hold of his country - and he went on to have a successful and life-long career in the chemical industry. This was interrupted, however, by what was to be the turning point in his life - his deportation to Auschwitz and a year in which he and his fellow prisoners suffered the most unimaginable degradation of spirit and physical suffering. His obsession with the idea that it was his duty to 'study, record and report' all that he had seen gave him the will to survive and those horrific experiences are the basis for his first great book, If This Is a Man. By the time The Periodic Table was published he had received world-wide acclaim, but his later years were clouded by recurring bouts of depression, culminating in his premature, and probably suicidal, death in 1987 when he plunged down the stairwell from his third-floor apartment. Angier's biography is enormous in scope, describing in well-researched detail the events of Levi's life, but also providing colourful portraits of the many friends and associates who influenced him and critiques and explanations of his work. Levi's papers have not been made available to her with the result that much of what she says is, by her own admission, conjecture, but in spite or perhaps because of this she has been able to delve deeply into the mind of the man, laying bare some of the great contradictions of his character such his fear of women and of fame, but his immense longing for both, and his persistent but scarcely credible claim that he was a reluctant writer. Despite its great length, this book makes compulsive reading, partly owing to its structure, which follows Levi's own literary style, abandoning chronology and logic in favour of the 'order of urgency', and partly as a result of the immense sympathy which Angier clearly feels for her subject and communicates to her readers. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
This is a biography of Primo Levi, the noted Italian philosopher, writer and scientist. The book examines the man within his life in Turin, before, during and after World War II and the particular place of the Jew in Italy. It looks at Primo Levi as a European as well as a notable survivor of Auschwitz and at the influence he had on people all over the world. What kind of man was this private, modest author, whose books made of him an icon of human dignity and justice? Did Auschwitz make him a writer at 27 and kill him at 67, or is the truth more complicated than that?
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74% buy the item featured on this page: The Double Bond: Primo Levi, A Biography |
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10% buy If This Is a Man / The Truce £6.97 |
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7% buy The Drowned and the Saved (Abacus Books) £5.86 |
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6% buy Primo Levi: A Biography £8.14 |
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