The Reawakening [Paperback]

Primo Levi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1995

First published in English in 1965, "The Reawakening" is Primo Levi's bestselling sequel to his classic memoir of the Holocaust, "Survival in Auschwitz." The inspiring story of Levi's liberation from the German death camp in January 1945 by the Red Army, it tells of his strange and eventful journey home to Italy by way of the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. Levi's railway travels take him through bombed-out cities and transit camps, with keen insight he describes the former prisoners and Russian soldiers he encounters along the way. An extraordinary account of faith, hope, and undying courage, "The Reawakening" was praised by Irving Howe as "a remarkable feat of literary craft."

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Italian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684826356
• ISBN-13: 978-0684826356
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Artists, Architects & Photographers

More About the Author

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carnival World, January 13, 2001

By 

Mike Vachow - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reawakening (Paperback)

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.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Troubles overcome are good to tell, November 14, 2000

By 

Esther Nebenzahl - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reawakening (Paperback)

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.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Important and Entertaining Memoir, January 31, 2004

By 

-_Tim_- (The Western Hemisphere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reawakening (Paperback)

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.