Primo Levi: The Elements of a Life

(Paperback)

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On 11 April 1987 the Italian writer Primo Levi fell to his death in the house where he was born. More than forty years after his rescue from a Nazi concentration camp, it now seemed that Levi had committed suicide. Levi's account of Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, is recognised as one of the essential books of mankind. No other work interrogates our recent moral history so incisively or conveys more profoundly the horror of the Nazi genocide. Written with great urgency to bear witness, the book put Levi among the foremost writers of our time. Ian Thomson spent over ten years in Italy and elsewhere researching and writing this rich and definitive biography. He traced the daughter of Levi's German superior at Auschwitz along with scores of other witnesses. New light is shed on Levi's recurring depressions and vital new information is unearthed regarding the writer's premature death. A witty, resilient man, Levi had suffered dark moods long before he was deported. The suicide of his grandfather, ninety-nine years earlier, is chronicled for the first time. This matchless biography unravels the strands of a life caught between the factory and the typewriter, family and friends.

Reviews

"Thomson writes with snap-brio and a sense of relevance" -- Clive James Times Literary Supplement "A model of its kind: beautiful in its arrangement and narration, measured and honest without every being remotely dull. Thank goodness for Ian Thomson...over and over again it is Thomson who proves himself, through his precision, modesty and intelligence, the true and perfect biographer of Primo Levi" -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday "A formidable work of literary biography... An absolutely brilliant account of wartime Italy... Very, very powerful" -- Richard Holmes BBC Radio Four "Clearly written with love, and unlikely to be surpassed" Sunday Telegraph "Pacy, straight-down-the-line-coolly authoritative" -- Blake Morrison Guardian

Author Bio

Ian Thomson was one of the last to interview Primo Levi, and the first to journey in his tracks as a biographer. He is an expert on Italian literature and has translated the Sicilian crime writer and essayist Leonardo Sciascia into English. Thomson is the author of two prize-winning works of reportage, Bonjour Blanc- A Journey Through Haiti and The Dead Yard- Tales of Modern Jamaica. He edited Articles of Faith- The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene, while his book Dante's Divine Comedy- A Journey Without End was published in 2018. He is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and the W. H. Heinemann Award. He lives in London.