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Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life (Jewish Lives) by [Lang, Berel, Lang, Ariella]

Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life (Jewish Lives) Kindle Edition

by Berel Lang (Author), Ariella Lang (Author)

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In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of fewer than 25 who survived the eleven months before the camp’s liberation. Upon returning to his native Turin, Levi resumed work as a chemist and was employed for thirty years by a company specializing in paints and other chemical coatings. Yet soon after his return to Turin, he also began writing—memoirs, essays, novels, short stories, poetry—and it is for this work that he has won international recognition. His first book, If This Is a Man, issued in 1947 after great difficulty in finding a publisher, remains a landmark document of the twentieth century.

Berel Lang's groundbreaking biography shines new light on Levi’s role as a major intellectual and literary figure—an important Holocaust writer and witness but also an innovative moral thinker in whom his two roles as chemist and writer converged, providing the “matter” of his life. Levi’s writing combined a scientist’s attentiveness to structure and detail, an ironic imagination that found in all nature an ingenuity at once inviting and evasive, and a powerful and passionate moral imagination. Lang’s approach provides a philosophically acute and nuanced analysis of Levi as thinker, witness, writer, and scientific detective.

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Length: 191 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Product details

File Size: 1976 KB
Print Length: 191 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (November 28, 2013)
Publication Date: November 1, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00GGSG06S
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,586,911 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #82 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Criticism > Subjects & Themes > Jewish
- #572 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > Jewish
- #1296 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists

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8 customer reviews

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barbara l.estrin

Primo Levi: the Matter of a Life matters for readers who want to know about Levi's work

December 1, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Berel Lang’s Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life focuses on how Levi wanted to live and how he might have wished to be remembered as he struggled to realize himself beyond the Shoah in the full force of his creative potential. Brilliantly chronicling how Levi forged the remarkable liaison between his literary and scientific endeavors, Lang reveals a depth of understanding offered by no other biography. With rich philosophical insight, Lang explores the full range of the originality revealed through Levi’s writings—as novelist, essayist, poet, witness, historian, reader, scientist and moralist.

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Julie M Randall

arrived quickly, excellent condition, good price

March 21, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

the author has done a scholarly job of analyzing primo levi's life and work. to quote from the book jacket, "lang's approach provides a philosophically acute and nuanced analysis of levi as thinker, witness, writer, and scientific detective."

One person found this helpful

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more like a college class in his beliefs

February 26, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I thought it would be a chronological bio......more like a college class in his beliefs....didn't finish.

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May 24, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Think we should all probably read this book.

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I will admit that perhaps I am not the smartest ...

December 22, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I will admit that perhaps I am not the smartest reader around, but the philosophical style of Berel Lang was too difficult for me.
I constantly asked myself, what does this mean? Do I need to have a degree in philosophy to understand this book? I couldn't make it through the whole book. I have read Primo Levi in the original Italian and had no problems. English is my native language, and yet I couldn't cut through the mostly abstruse language of Mr. Lang. I wanted to know the biographical elements of Primo Levi's life. What made him a success? Who were his family members? Who was his wife? What made this Jewish life valuable to include in this series? I never found out. I will have to buy a different type of biography.

4 people found this helpful

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pamela friedland

October 23, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

a serious and fascinating account of the life of a moral hero

Comment

Much about what he thought, too little about what he felt or who he was.

January 17, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Too much about Levi's thoughts, opinions, ideas, etc., too little about the man. Levi seems, in this book, to be almost characterless, to have had virtually no inner or personal life. He emerges, if he does, as a man who emerged, i.e. rose above his own life, a veritable blessing, to be sure, for one who has been through Auschwitz and the Holocaust, but considerably less so for the reader, at least this reader. There is, of course, more--Levi killed himself, after all--and the book does not capture it, doesn't really even seek it. This is indeed, as the subtitle says, the matter, principally the gray matter, not the soul or feel or experience of a life.

6 people found this helpful

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Beeghly Library Acquisitions

November 20, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Great book, timely delivery.

One person found this helpful

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