If This Is a Man and The Truce (Penguin Modern Classics) [Hardcover]

Primo Levi (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Pr; First edition & printing in this form edition (June 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140047239
• ISBN-13: 978-0140047233
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,595,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The key book of the twentieth century, January 4, 2000

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: If This Is a Man and The Truce (Penguin Modern Classics) (Hardcover)

If I had to nominate one book from the 20th century to give to a person from another century it would be this one. The two books in this single volume complement eachother perfectly. They are so different and yet I cannot say which is the better book. I have tried for several weeks to write a few paragraphs to sell this book to any would-be reader, but nothing I can say can convey the extraordinary personality of the writer. Reading If This Is A Man was a humbling experience in a way that no other book or movie I have encountered in my life has been.

People sometimes suggest that the Holocaust is old news, part of a long ago past. The day after I finished Levi's book I heard five English soccer fans singing songs about Belsen, imitating the sound of gas escaping and yelling "turn on the shower" - and laughing. I've debated with educated Americans who believe the Holocaust was exaggerated and that most of the deaths were caused by disease. One in seven French voters support a man who is in Holocaust denial. Perhaps these people would not be changed by this book, but I hope that a hundred years from now millions of people will still be reading Primo Levi and learning from this sad, brave, modest man.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you are a man, December 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: If This Is a Man and The Truce (Penguin Modern Classics) (Hardcover)

If you are a man, no matter if you're jew or german or whatever else, you cannot read this book emotionless. This is something so strong words are not enough to describe it. Nobody must forget, nobody must repeat what's so honestly described in this pages. Primo Levi committed suicide 40 years later, never able to chase those days off his days and nights. We owe him and everybody who suffered that atrocity at least the promise to keep on reading his testimony,generation after generation, no matter our race, religion or gender.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book & never forget it., December 2, 1999

By 

Elizabeth Green - See all my reviews

This review is from: If This Is a Man and The Truce (Penguin Modern Classics) (Hardcover)

'If this is a man / The Truce' is an amazing testimony to the millions of Jews who suffered & died during the Holocaust & to any other human being who has ever suffered at the hands of another man on account of race, colour, religion or any other prejudice.

Primo Levi recounts the months he spent in Auschwitz & although you get an impression of the concentration camps, the suffering endured is hard to contemplate. He suggests there should be different words in the camp to describe hunger, cold & tired. From the comfort of our armchairs, maybe it is us who do not truly understand these words. He captures the full scale of horrors that was the Holocaust. The story of little Hurbinek (named so by other survivors), whom he came across in the camp after liberation shows the pitiless evil in man that was Nazism.

"Hurbinek, who was three years old & perhaps had been born in Aushwitz & had never seen a tree; Hurbinek, who had fought like a man, to the last breath, to gain his entry into the world of men. From which a bestial power had excluded him; Hurbinek, the nameless, whose tiny forearm - even his - bore the tattoo of Aushwitz; Hurbinek died int he first days of March 1945, free but not redeemed. Nothing remains of him; he bears witness through these words of mine."

Read this book & remember it. This is what men are capable of.