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Book Reviews on...

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
Buy now

If This Is a Man

by Primo Levi

Recommendations from our site

“It’s about his 11 months in Auschwitz. I was reading this over the weekend—just to bone up for this interview—and just like every other time I’ve read it, it stretches my ability to comprehend. The physical and emotional pain is extremely intense. Even the most inured cynic is taken aback by the infrastructure of human cruelty in the camp.” Read more...

The best books on Philosophy and Prison

Andy West, Philosopher

“When it came out in the States it was known as Survival in Auschwitz. I think it’s a work of genius…some of it is testimony. But what I admire so much about it is that it is a book without pathos, or sentiment. Levi was a scientist, a radical empiricist. His ability and his care in describing the camp structure is unrelenting. It’s almost as if he answers his own question: have we got rid of rational man? Answer: No, because here I am, observing, writing, and thinking.” Read more...

The best books on Human Rights and Literature

Lyndsey Stonebridge, Literary Scholar

“It’s hard to believe that the human frame can survive under such circumstances, let alone survive to write something like this.” Read more...

The Best War Writing

Kate McLoughlin, Literary Scholar

“Levi regains reason, by treating his experience in Auschwitz as something that is subject to rational analysis.” Read more...

Aleksandar Hemon on Man’s Inhumanity to Man

Aleksandar Hemon, Novelist

“Primo Levi was an Italian Jew and he was arrested as a member of the anti-fascist resistance towards the end of the war, after Germany had occupied Italy. He was deported to Auschwitz. He survived and then he wrote a book about his experiences there. This really is a book that everybody should be made to read because he very sensitively describes what people become in a concentration camp.” Read more...

The best books on War Crimes

Andrew Cayley, Lawyer

Other books by Primo Levi

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi

The Truce by Primo Levi

The Truce
by Primo Levi

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

The Drowned and the Saved
by Primo Levi

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