Rating: 
Summary: An amazing journey with Primo Levi
Review: An really good book. I read it immediately after his previous book (Survival in Auschwitz : The Nazi Assault on Humanity) and where the first one is extremely sad and depressing this second one is an incredible insight into the mixture of characters that Levi encounters on his way back from Auschwitz. Although set in a completely ruined Eastern Europe I found the book positive and intriguing to read. His friends the Greek, Cesare, il Moro etc. are all amazing characters to read about and his whole journey through the Russian bureaucracy is just as fascinating to experience as well.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing journey with Primo Levi
Review: An really good book. I read it immediately after his previous book (Survival in Auschwitz : The Nazi Assault on Humanity) and where the first one is extremely sad and depressing this second one is an incredible insight into the mixture of characters that Levi encounters on his way back from Auschwitz. Although set in a completely ruined Eastern Europe I found the book positive and intriguing to read. His friends the Greek, Cesare, il Moro etc. are all amazing characters to read about and his whole journey through the Russian bureaucracy is just as fascinating to experience as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Alive and struggling
Review: It's almost as if Primo Levi didn't know what kind of a point he wanted to make with this book. Else the whole tone of Survival at Auschwitz must be subverted. In Survival Levi had a very set time and experience to relate. In The Reawakening there is travelling and motion. Levi goes all over the place trying to get back home and the people he encounters on the way are wonderfully alive. There is exhilaration and there is the pain of knowing that things will never be the same. At the end you are left with several conflicting emotions, as Levi knows that part of him died in Auschwitz and isn't sure which parts are still alive
Rating:
Summary: Carnival World
Review: Like Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table, The Reawakening is populated with Levi's brilliant language and fascination with character. In Survival, Table and Reawakening, Levi is careful not to force facts into a satisfyingly explanatory story. The Reawakening is a picaresque without the moral center. Levi travels home through a carnival world, a Europe simultaneously stunned and ecstatic, a landscape of displaced characters, Greek villagers in Polish refugee camps, complicit Germans sitting down to the first course of horrific recent history and guilt, cadaverous lager inmates staggering into a world forever altered. It is a world populated with impresarios, rakes, opportunists, suicides, daredevils and rubes. But, more than anything else, The Reawakening is brimming with life; Levi makes his way home eyes forward. I found myself thinking of two other books while reading Reawakening--Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Like Kosinski, Levi reminds us that much of rural eastern Europe was cruel and primitive before the Nazi's made a virtue of these qualities. And, like Wolfe's Gant family, the characters in Levi's account are often exuberant to the point of mania. I think that Levi is one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. In this way, I'm not a reliable critic. Reviewing The Reawakening is akin to reviewing Hamlet for me.
Rating:
Summary: Carnival World
Review: Like Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table, The Reawakening is populated with Levi's brilliant language and fascination with character. In Survival, Table and Reawakening, Levi is careful not to force facts into a satisfyingly explanatory story. The Reawakening is a picaresque without the moral center. Levi travels home through a carnival world, a Europe simultaneously stunned and ecstatic, a landscape of displaced characters, Greek villagers in Polish refugee camps, complicit Germans sitting down to the first course of horrific recent history and guilt, cadaverous lager inmates staggering into a world forever altered. It is a world populated with impresarios, rakes, opportunists, suicides, daredevils and rubes. But, more than anything else, The Reawakening is brimming with life; Levi makes his way home eyes forward. I found myself thinking of two other books while reading Reawakening--Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Like Kosinski, Levi reminds us that much of rural eastern Europe was cruel and primitive before the Nazi's made a virtue of these qualities. And, like Wolfe's Gant family, the characters in Levi's account are often exuberant to the point of mania. I think that Levi is one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. In this way, I'm not a reliable critic. Reviewing The Reawakening is akin to reviewing Hamlet for me.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent account of Primo Levi the observer.
Review: Primo Levi again shows the magic of his writing in this tale of the purgatory he experienced after his liberation from Auschwitz. His memories of the people he meets along the way and the way he describes them are amazing, whether you hate them or love them they all seem ... human, something one couldn't exactly tell from his account of the camp itself. Truly a brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent account of Primo Levi the observer.
Review: Primo Levi again shows the magic of his writing in this tale of the purgatory he experienced after his liberation from Auschwitz. His memories of the people he meets along the way and the way he describes them are amazing, whether you hate them or love them they all seem ... human, something one couldn't exactly tell from his account of the camp itself. Truly a brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: Troubles overcome are good to tell
Review: Published in 1963, "The Reawakening" is a narrative of Primo Levi's tortuous journey back to Turin after liberation from Auschwitz. In fact, it is a follow-up of "Survival in Auschwitz." As stated by Primo Levi, "after Auschwitz, I had an absolute need to write, not only as a moral duty, but as psychological need, to free myself from anguish." Out of 650 Italian Jews who journeyed to Auschwitz, with Primo Levi, only 20 left the camp alive. Levi assumes the calm, sober language of the witness, with no manifested hate and purpose of revenge, devoid of bitterness. His prose is precise, clear, with no embellishment, lively transmitting his bewilderment of the simple fact that he had survived. The reader cannot help be amazed by the details recorded in Levi's memory, places, names, characters, personalities, it is as though he wrote everything in locus. His memory was a blessing... but might have also been his tormenter... After a long period of depression, Levi died after falling from a stairwell in his Turin home. The question will always remain whether it was or not suicide. Levi, through his writings, symbolizes the triumph of reasoning and humanity over madness and cruelty.
Rating:
Summary: Troubles overcome are good to tell
Review: Published in 1963, "The Reawakening" is a narrative of Primo Levi's tortuous journey back to Turin after liberation from Auschwitz. In fact, it is a follow-up of "Survival in Auschwitz." As stated by Primo Levi, "after Auschwitz, I had an absolute need to write, not only as a moral duty, but as psychological need, to free myself from anguish." Out of 650 Italian Jews who journeyed to Auschwitz, with Primo Levi, only 20 left the camp alive. Levi assumes the calm, sober language of the witness, with no manifested hate and purpose of revenge, devoid of bitterness. His prose is precise, clear, with no embellishment, lively transmitting his bewilderment of the simple fact that he had survived. The reader cannot help be amazed by the details recorded in Levi's memory, places, names, characters, personalities, it is as though he wrote everything in locus. His memory was a blessing... but might have also been his tormenter... After a long period of depression, Levi died after falling from a stairwell in his Turin home. The question will always remain whether it was or not suicide. Levi, through his writings, symbolizes the triumph of reasoning and humanity over madness and cruelty.
Rating:
Summary: An Important and Entertaining Memoir
Review: The Reawakening opens in January 1945, when author Primo Levi is released from a Nazi concnetration camp by Russian troops. His health almost ruined, suffering from unbearable knowledge of the crimes committed in the camps, Levi re-enters the world to find that it has been turned upside down by the war. Improbably - he explains in an afterword that it is not in his nature to hate - he finds in himself a capacity to see the world afresh, almost as a child would. In the rest of the book, we accompany Levi and his companions on a picaresque through postwar Europe and Russia as they try to make their way back to their native Italy. While their sufferings are legion, Levi takes great pleasure in food, in his fellow man, and in nature. In particular, he displays a fine appreciation for the absurdities visited on the refugees by their well-intentioned but inept Russian rescuers. This book is an entertaining read. Beyond that, it is an important document of the Holocaust. And beyond that, it is an important resource for modern readers who are finding their own way through an often absurd world. Highly recommended.
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