Primo Levi: A Life [Hardcover]

Ian Thomson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0805073434 | ISBN-13: 978-0805073430 | Edition: First Edition

Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table, wrote books that have been called the essential works of humankind. Yet he lived an unremarkable existence, remaining until his death in the house in which he'd been born; managing a paint and varnish factory for thirty years; and tending his invalid mother to the last. Now, in a matchless account, Ian Thomson unravels the strands of a life as improbable as it was influential, the story of the most modest of men who became a universal touchstone of conscience and humanism.

Drawing on exclusive access to family members and previously unseen correspondence, Thomson reconstructs the world of Levi's youth-the rhythms of Jewish life in Turin during the Mussolini years-as well as his experience in Auschwitz and difficult reintegration into postwar Italy. Thomson presents Levi in all his facets: his fondness for Louis Armstrong and fast cars, his insomnia and many near-catastrophic work accidents. Finally, he explores the controversy and isolation of Levi's later years, along with the increasing tensions in his life-between his private anguish and gift for friendship; his severe bouts of depression and passion for life and ideas; his pervasive dread and reasoned, pragmatic ethic.

Praised in Britain as "the best sort of history" and "a model of its kind," Primo Levi: A Life is certain to take its place as the standard biography and a necessary companion to the works themselves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thomson's biography of Primo Levi comes a little over a year after Carole Angier's Levi biography, The Double Bond. The merits of the two are sharply distinct from each other. Where Angier considered broader questions of culture and identity, Thomson is brisk and novelistic. Thomson had extensive, exclusive access to Levi papers and family members, where Angier had almost none. For that reason alone, any Leviphile will derive considerable pleasure from Thomson's account. The fast-paced narrative sometimes results in frustratingly concise characterizations ("Chemistry was to be a powerful magnet for the inadequate teenager looking for a focus to his life"), but that may well be the price for a book that follows Levi's comings and goings so closely. Thomson, who has translated the novels of Sicilian crime writer Leonardo Sciascia into English and wrote Bonjour Blanc, is particularly attentive to the often glossed-over later years of the author's life, tracing the twin courses of his publishing career and his deepening struggle with depression. Since Levi's tragic suicide in 1987, the search for the true man behind the mythic Holocaust survivor has only intensified; Levi biographers always find they must compete not only with each other but with their subject, whose immortal memoirs will inevitably have the final say. In the end, Thomson's contribution may concentrate more on the trees than the forest, but its smoothly assembled accumulation of details renders an invaluable service to the Levi legacy.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Levi's books are landmark accounts of the Holocaust experience and the enduring questions of guilt and survival. But this is very much the biography of an ordinary man with all his flaws, a secular assimilated Jew who bungled his role in the Resistance and up to the time of his own deportation in 1943 refused to believe the accounts of Nazi atrocity. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and other witnesses, and on one long interview with Levi himself shortly before his suicide in 1987, Thomson writes with authority about his subject's thoughts, feelings, and memories. The sources are fully documented, but the notes never intrude on the accessible narrative. Unlike Carole Angier in The Double Bond (2002), Thomson doesn't spend much time analyzing Levi's private life, but many readers will want more about Levi's books and less detail about what he did month by month. "Survivors can be troublesome and tedious," Levi said, and it is that voice without a hint of sanctimony that bears witness in this authoritative biography. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; First Edition edition (November 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805073434
• ISBN-13: 978-0805073430
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,841,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisitely detailed look at a fascinating man, April 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Primo Levi: A Life (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fulsome research of This Man's motivations and his times, August 8, 2009

By 

Rodney J. Moss - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Primo Levi: A Life (Paperback)

Thomson's work is a wonderful read, well researched with telling detail and written in prose suitable to its subject. You can feel the struggle Primo endures to hack through the Auschwitz experience, his work as a chemist, his fathering,husbanding, literary aspirations and living in cramped circumstances within his mother's home. Highly recommended to the devotee of Levi's fascinating journey and written achievements. The research around the period, particularly the shakers and movers in northern Italian political and cultural life is enthralling with ample evidence from a host of surviving acquaintances. Levi's depressive tendencies are charted. His rise from obscurity to literary fame. His days in the chemical factory..it's all there, weighing in and shaping the artist that he was. Without overstating the issue, Thomson lays out the supreme irony of Levi's career with the Turin chemical industrial firm, its hazards, and his survival route by working with the industrialized death camp at Auschwitz.

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotionally Torn, July 23, 2011

By 

P. Cooper (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Primo Levi: A Life (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book; however, its content hurt me deeply. After reading this book, I know Mr. Levi suffered with depression. Who wouldn't after being physically, mentally and emotinally violated in a concentration camp. However, I do not believe he wanted his life to end.