Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life
- ISBN-10
- 0300199201
- ISBN-13
- 9780300199208
- Series
- Primo Levi
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 191
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2013-11-28
- Publisher
- Yale University Press
- Authors
- Berel Lang, Ariella Lang
Description
In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of fewer than 25 who survived the eleven months before the camp’s liberation. Upon returning to his native Turin, Levi resumed work as a chemist and was employed for thirty years by a company specializing in paints and other chemical coatings. Yet soon after his return to Turin, he also began writing—memoirs, essays, novels, short stories, poetry—and it is for this work that he has won international recognition. His first book, If This Is a Man, issued in 1947 after great difficulty in finding a publisher, remains a landmark document of the twentieth century. Berel Lang's groundbreaking biography shines new light on Levi’s role as a major intellectual and literary figure—an important Holocaust writer and witness but also an innovative moral thinker in whom his two roles as chemist and writer converged, providing the “matter” of his life. Levi’s writing combined a scientist’s attentiveness to structure and detail, an ironic imagination that found in all nature an ingenuity at once inviting and evasive, and a powerful and passionate moral imagination. Lang’s approach provides a philosophically acute and nuanced analysis of Levi as thinker, witness, writer, and scientific detective.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics
By William J. CooperA middle-aged widower, Eaton had recently married Margaret O'Neale Timberlake, the daughter of a Washington tavern keeper. Her first marriage had been to a ...
-
Jesse James was His Name: Or, Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri
By William A. Settle10 When the funeral party reached Kearney she cried out to Sheriff Timberlake , " Oh , Mr. Timberlake , my son has gone to God , but his friends still live ...
-
The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power, 1815-1848
By William R. NesterLt. John Timberlake was smitten, talked her into marrying him, and then was forced to leave his bride for an extended naval voyage.
-
Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography
By Lawrence J. Quirk, William SchoellThe supporting cast, including Lionel Barrymore as Jackson, Tone as Eaton, Robert Taylor as Timberlake, and James Stewart as another persistent suitor, ...
-
Conversations with William Faulkner
By M. Thomas IngeStudent assistant Corrie E. Ward and faculty secretaries Nina Wells and Susan G. Timberlake provided invaluable assistance .
-
Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Selected Letters 1839-1865
By Ulysses S. GrantKroper Priate WAZ e Hale curie Tarner Zur National Forces . ... N. MICHLER , nie22 Ernest 2 Maj . of Engineers , M.Guna Timberlake Wins Zone For HRJohnson ...
-
Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist
By William C. DavisAccording to Robert E. L. Krick of Richmond in an e-mail message, the only likely candidates ... the prison adjutant, and a clerk known only as Timberlake.
-
William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion
By Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, William MontgomeryEdward A. Bloom ( 1964 ) ; revised in Muir , Shakespeare the Professional ( 1973 ) ... A. W. Pollard ( 1923 ) , 57-112 Timberlake , Philip W. , The Feminine ...
-
The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power, 1815-1848
By William NesterRichard Timberlake, 7746 Origins of Central Banking in the United States ... 1820, in Thomas Jefferson, 7726 Selected I/Vritings of 7740mas]e erson, ed.
-
Escape: A Memoir
By Carolyn Jessop, Laura PalmerWe'd picked the green tomatoes just before the frost and let them ripen in buckets. Every day we'd sort through them looking for some that were ripe enough ...