The Search For Roots: A Personal Anthology [Hardcover]

Primo Levi (Author), Italo Calvino (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2002

The Search for Roots is a collection of writings that Primo Levi considered to be essential reading. Beginning with the Book of Job, that drama of the just oppressed by injustice, these thirty pieces, with introductions by Levi, reflect his profound knowledge of science and deep passion for literature, and his survival of Auschwitz—making it an anthology that is both universal and poignantly autobiographical. Levi suggests four routes through these writings, four ways of understanding the human predicament and of achieving partial salvation in an apparently indifferent universe: through laughter, through knowledge, and through understanding the injustice of suffering and the stature of man. With this in mind, he presents familiar voices: Swift, Conrad, T. S. Eliot, and Arthur C. Clarke, for example, and introduces us to less familiar ones: Lucretius, Giuseppe Belli, Fredric Brown, Stefano D’Arrigo, and Hermann Langbein. Most of the pieces, as Levi comments, reflect the fundamental dichotomies that face us all: “falsehood/truth, laughter/tears, judgment/folly, hope/despair, triumph/disaster.” As Peter Forbes writes in his Introduction, “In the context of the twenty-first century, all of Levi’s choices are striking”; they exhibit “a kind of chastened curiosity rare in our time, and an undiminished sense of wonder and horror at a universe that has such things in it.”

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In 1981, noted author and Holocaust survivor Levi (1919-86; The Periodic Table) edited this anthology of 30 short excerpts from works that were especially important to him. They are basically arranged in the order he read them himself and point to four main themes, delineated in the preface: salvation through laughter, our unjust suffering, our stature as human beings, and salvation through knowledge. These four aspects of Levi's reading possessed him both as a writer and as a man. The book covers such major writers as Homer, Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, T.S. Eliot, and Thomas Mann. Science writing (e.g., Charles Darwin, Arthur C. Clarke, Ludwig Gattermann) and Jewish life in 20th-century Europe (Levi's great subject, represented by writers like Isaac Babel and Sholem Aleichem) are also represented. Especially noteworthy are the excerpts from lesser-known Italian writers (e.g., Carlo Porta, Giuseppe Parini). Not only are the selections themselves illuminating but Levi's preface and head notes are invaluable additions to the writings of this author of reason, morality, and honesty. The introduction by Forbes, the editor of Poetry Review, and afterword by Italo Calvino further explain the anthology. Highly recommended for literature and Jewish Studies collections. Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Levi, who committed suicide in 1987, said that he felt more naked and exposed to the public in making the choices for this "personal anthology" of his favorite reading than in writing his own books, including his memoirs of surviving Auschwitz. Lifelong readers will recognize Levi's passion to share what he's read, the favorite books he keeps on the same shelf, all profusely underlined, and his discovery that his deeper and more lasting loves are the hardest to explain. Originally published in Italy in 1981 and now translated into English for the first time, the anthology includes an insightful new introduction by translator Forbes, who points out how Levi's 30 selections reflect his hybrid self, connecting reading that could not be more heterogeneous, from the humorous Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem to scientific theory about black holes. Most readers will be less interested in the selections themselves than in what Levi says about each of them and what they reveal about his life. Recommend this with Carole Angier's new biography of Levi, The Double Bond [BKL Ap 1 02]. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee (March 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566634458
• ISBN-13: 978-1566634458
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,835,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Roots, September 9, 2008

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Search For Roots: A Personal Anthology (Paperback)

For all of you who think that this is a selection of texts by Levi (a kind of "Primo Levi's Reader" with a fragmentary sample of his work), it is not.

This is a selection of texts (literary, scientific, etc) made by Primo Levi among those he believed to be the requiered reading for a humanistic education. Take a look at the Table of Contents and see for yourself.

You don't need to have read previously any Levi book in order to enjoy this anthology, which is a masterful collage by a master thinker. It is a joyful read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Always Primo, November 2, 2010

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Evelyn Waugh - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Search For Roots: A Personal Anthology (Paperback)

A moral man. A man of integrity, empathy, intelligence and more. I wish I had known him. And the best way I can, is to read about him and to read what he wrote. Time well spent.