Primo Levi : A Life

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Summary: An exquisitely detailed look at a fascinating man
Review: A highly enjoyable book. Thomson paints an extremely detailed picture but does not attempt to create a mythic figure out of Levi. He is presented in 3 dimensions with all his strengths and weaknesses. Extremely rich look at the assimilated Jewish community of Turin suddenly being cast as the enemy of the Fascist state. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: buy the book
Review: A really wonderful biography on a complex man. Kudos to the author. I'm impressed.

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Summary: A fascinating biography which leaves a big question
Review: Ian Thomson brings out the contrasts in Primo Levi's life. On the one hand, we have a simple, unremarkable little Italian, an anonymous individual who spent his working life in the offices and laboratories of a large chemical firm and never escaped from the apartment in which he grew up. His life seems altogether too ordinary. But Levi was also a man who could communicate with insight and passion in a way few others have managed.

Levi's life was spent within the confines of a Turin apartment block; his sole release came in his imprisonment in Auschwitz, one of the Italian Jews rounded up for eradication. His description of this experience, "If this is a man", presents an astonishing account of human bestiality, human survival, and the sheer resilience of humanity. The concentration camp inevitably scarred Levi - he emerged, as did others, consumed with guilt, convinced he had no right to survive.

But survive he did, and his life after the War is one of paralleling roles - as the ordinary little Italian bourgeois and as the international literary figure. He seems to have been unable to handle the conflict - Levi is presented as a fundamentally unprepossessing man, a man who preferred anonymity but was cursed with the ability to capture something of the essence of the human spirit.

Thomson portrays Levi as a man who had learned to value reason and enquiry and reject bigotry and ignorance. He learned this from the anti-Semitism he endured as a youth. He witnessed the extremes in Auschwitz. And he had the experience of his own father's suicide - a sense that reason could snap and give way to depression and despair at any moment.

Levi demonstrated that humanity, that caring for others, valuing and respecting others, is a fundamental of the human condition. Thomson's biography presents a complex yet simple man. It is well researched, well-written, accessible, and gives a dynamic picture of Levi's life. Curiously, it's weakness lies in the handling of Levi's later years.

The picture of Levi's childhood, adolescence and life before and during Auschwitz is clear and engaging, but somehow the biography becomes less lucid when we enter the years of Levi's literary fame. Maybe this says something about the man - once he became famous, he became less accessible to analysis and understanding, perhaps even cutting himself off from himself ... until the day he killed himself in the same place and by the same means as his father.

An engaging and readable biography ... but one which will nevertheless leave you wondering why.