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Primo Levi: A Life Kindle Edition

by Ian Thomson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 46 ratings
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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.

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  1. Print length
    622 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Metropolitan Books
  5. Publication date
    March 11, 2014
  6. File size
    1299 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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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

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00I1W5JCS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Metropolitan Books; First edition (March 11, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 11, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1299 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 622 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 46 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
We don’t use a simple average to calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star. Our system gives more weight to certain factors—including how recent the review is and if the reviewer bought it on Amazon. Learn more
46 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Adam Scott Campbell
5.0 out of 5 stars highly recommended
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2011
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Thompson creates a thorough, engaging, and intelligent chronicle of the life and times of Primo Levi. The book not only focuses on every aspect of Primo Levi the man, but all areas of his life, environments and the people who influenced him to create a complete picture of how and why Levi came to be. Highly recommended.
3 people found this helpful
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ColleenJulie
4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Biography
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2014
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Certainly, this is a very detailed and well researched biography -- and I think it was very well written.
I have read many of Mr. Levi's books and knowing more about his life certainly adds much to his many autobiographical
works. Mr. Levi was a fascinating and talented man, and certain also human and had struggles in his life. He
is very much painted as a many-dimensional person in this biography.
I do wonder why Mr. Levi's wife and children had minimal, (if any, it seems) input in the book -- the author has
to construct the relationships they had with him via the interviews with many friends and other family
members. While well documented and researched - there is a very big piece of the life of Mr. Levi
missing in the book, without their personal comments and cooperation (does anyone know what the immediate
family thought of the book, and if they were maybe just adverse to interviews with Anyone?)
I did feel that the author concentrated a bit too much on his interpretation of the 'asexual' aspect of Mr. Levi's
friendships with women throughout his life - and that he worked overly hard to back his impressions of Mr. Levi's depressions and probable suicide. At times, it did seem that the author was trying a bit too hard to mold his story
to the (generally accepted) suicide interpretation .......... there is another camp of thought that felt that this was an
accidental death - but that is ruled out quickly in this book (the opening chapter Starts with Mr. Levi's death, and
then moves back to his birth and reconstructs his life from there).
If you want to know most everything about Primo Levi's life, you will enjoy this book ...... despite the little things
noted above that nagged at me just a bit.
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mgbflut
5.0 out of 5 stars Indepth and lengthy, but worth the read
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2014
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For those of us who are fascinated by Primo Levi's story, by the way he writes and presents his characters, and by how he make have come to his perceptions of humanity, this book was an invaluable read. It is not light. There are a magnitude of details that reveal just how much research went into this tome. But the story is well put together and again, I feel it is worth while and a great magnifying glass into the world of this mysterious man.
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DGB
3.0 out of 5 stars Informational value
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2018
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There is a lot of information in this book that is interesting but it unfortunately reads more like an extended wikipedia entry than the chronicle of one of the most interesting men of the 20th century. It has the unfortunate (to me) feature of having a paragraph or two that flow well, sucking the reader in to the flow of Levi's life, and then a paragraph that clunks, seems out of place, breaks the thread, and frustrates the reader, kind of like a tiny glitch in a streamed song that breaks the moment. So, for information, it has some value, perhaps something like a reference source. As an enjoyable read, I found it to be a little bit of a rough ride.
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Urmuz
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Biography !
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2014
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It lets the character speak for itself- like watching an Erroll Morris documentary- no interruptions, no interpretations, no moralising insofar as someone who has been subject to the horrors of the Holocaust would be dissected like any other average person. It does not pretend to solve the riddle of Levi's suicide but eloquently carries the story of his graceful infinite sadness to it's very end. Excellent integration of the Italian historical context, which has been far from dull in those years.
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William Patry
2.0 out of 5 stars A Flawed but worthwhile read
Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2016
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Mr. Thomson devoted a great deal of time and effort in writing his work, and I am glad I took the time and effort to read it. No one biographer can capture the life of someone like Primo Levi, but Mr. Thomson's interviewing of so many of Primo Levi's friends and family provides a very rich portrait, but one that doesn't get bogged down in details. This is no small accomplishment. Among the issues preventing me from giving the book more stars are Mr. Thomson's relentless psycho-babble interjections. Every woman whom Primo Levi befriends occasions a remark by Mr. Thomson that the relationship was not only asexual but in being asexual was reflective of a deep character attribute, but one that is never spelled out. At the same time, he repeatedly claims that Levi's friendships with male friends have a homoerotic tinge. This is cheap, dime-store stuff, and so very antithetical to Levi's always proper behavior. Levi deserves better.
Mr. Thomson also constantly claims that people "must" have thought this or that without the slightest evidence to support such views. This is gross speculation masquerading as fact.
About a quarter of the way from the end of the book, all of the writing is focused on the final event in the book, Levi's alleged suicide. We are treated to dozens of dozens of pages about his depression about how people (always after the fact) either "knew" or suspected that Levi would take his life. There is no effort to present other viewpoints, nothing of the measured nature of Diego Gambetta's 1999 article in the Boston Review (see here: [...]). Instead there are psycho-babble theories going back to Levi's grandfather's death. Everyone will come to their own conclusions, but to construct a a serious biography of such a careful, precise man around only one conclusion is, to me, a substantial flaw.
In the end, for me this is a serious work, with some very annoying flaws.
6 people found this helpful
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A Mae
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2009
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As an autobiography, this read very well. I would recommend it to anyone already interested in Primo Levi
One person found this helpful
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jess
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2022
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Perfect
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古川郁子
3.0 out of 5 stars レビューについて
Reviewed in Japan on August 14, 2013
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アマゾン上の予定通りの日に届いたし、本の内容が面白い。メールで配達期日について会社のフォローがありました。
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