The Double Bond: Primo Levi, a Biography

by Carole Angier

An important writer to emerge from the death camps, Levi spent 65 of his 67 years in Turin, Italy, where he worked as a chemist by day & wrote at night in a study, his childhood bedroom. Thanks to memoirs--"Survival in Auschwitz", "The Reawakening" & "The Periodic Table"--he became known as a moral man who'd transmuted the agonies of persecution into understanding. He died in 1987, apparently having thrown himself into the stairwell of the house in which he'd been born. Angier spent a decade writing this meticulously researched biography, which illuminates the design of his interior how he lived as a man divided, not only between chemistry & writing but between hope & despair, & how the duty to testify released him to communicate.
Angier's biography of Jean Rhys (1990) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award & won the Writers' Guild Award for Non-Fiction. She's the Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick & lives in Oxfordshire.
"A vastly detailed & intricately layered biography...Meticulous & visionary...Angier's critical appreciation is to my mind flawless."--Richard Eder, NY Times Book Review
"Compelling & beautifully written...Ms Angier's book is devoted to capturing the inner man as much as the outward circumstances of his life...Her detailed account of the ordeal in the camps is painstakingly presented & told with a respectful care."--Erich Eichman, Wall Street
"Brilliantly unorthodox...Angier is Levi's perfect biographer--a natural foil for his own reluctance to reveal his real self--& her work is the perfect complement to his, daring & justified in each of its own liberties...Her book is a remarkable success. Not only for its own achievement, but also because it restores to Levi's life the dignity his death seemed to betray."--Alex Abramovich"--Village Voice
"The Double Bond has the pace & grip of a thriller. I could hardly out it down from the start to finish. Primo Levi was a natural storyteller whose fearful experiences in Auschwitz & elsewhere made him a great writer, & one of the 20th century's prime witnesses. It cost him all he had to give. Carole Angier explores the dark secrets of his life & work with humane & moving clarity. She uses the unknown & unknowable as key structural elements--like holes in lace--in a biographical design as rich, intricate & mysterious as the nature of the man it mirrors."--Hilary Spurling, author of "The Unknown Matisse"
"Carole Angier has solved the almost intractable problems which Primo Levi sets the modern biographer, with penetrating & audacious ingenuity. Using his own literary methods & complementing them, with intelligence & imagination, she gives us new insight into his character. His great mission was to bear witness during the last half of the 20th century. Her inspired recreation of his life & work will assist him to continue doing so well into the present century. It is is a subtle & extraordinary achievement."--Michael Holroyd, author of "Lytton Strachey"
"Angier's life study succeeds because, beyond its diligence & probity, it is an exhaustive exercise of moral imagination. She openly subjects many of her own insights & conjectures to the question of how her subject might have reacted to them."--Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
"Angier's long, gripping narrative of Levi's time in Auschwitz synthesizes the best of his memoirs, poetry, fiction, essays & scientific writing. She shows & tells that he was 'not just a great witness but a great artist; & the 1st because the 2nd.' Just as compelling is her discussion of the moral issues he raises about the 'gray zone' of human behavior, the shame of the drowned & the saved, the roles of victims, perpetrators & bystanders. A compelling biography & a must for all Holocaust collections."--Booklist
List of Illustrations
Illustration Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Paradise Lost
Botticelli 1919-30: The Hare & the Tortoise
Primo Levi 1930-37: The Hare & the Tortoise II
1937-41: Alberto
1941-42: Burning
7/42-9/8/43: Gabriella
Amay & 9/43-1/44
2/44
2/22/44-1/27/45
The 1/27-10/19/45
Levi 1945-47: Dancing
Levi Uomo 1948-63: Corso Re Umberto 75
1963-75: Lilith
1975-85: The Double Bond
The Drowned & the 1986
The Double 1987
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Genres: Biography, Judaism, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

Paperback

First published March 19, 2002

About the author

Carole Angier is the award-winning biographer of Jean Rhys (1985 & 1990). Her biography of the great Italian writer Primo Levi was published in the UK and the US in 2002 to critical acclaim. Carole was a teacher for many years before taking the plunge into full-time writing, teaching all forms of English (literature, creative writing, expository writing) for many institutions, including ten years as a tutor with the Open University. She also speaks Italian, French and German, though Carole says that she would not dare to write in them.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

First my pet peeves--too many Italian words that were not translated into English and in the beginning the book bogs down with the life stories of all of Primo's friends and realative. At least it feels like all of them.

Now my praise--this is an amazing biography of an amazing man. It's extremely well written and thoroughly researched. It's dense. It took me a long time to read, but I've always been curious about Primo Levi and who exactly he was. I got to the point that I wanted to finish, yet I didn't, because I knew what the end would be.

The preface is very interesting, makes many good points about the art of biography. The Levi family, at least his nuclear family, did not cooperate with the author. Some of his friends refused and many she had to court and cajole. She includes herself and her struggle to get these loyal companions to tell her what she wanted to know in the book. It's done very skillfully and I think it adds to the book, it doesn't detract from it, as it would with some writers.

This is a long, dense, very good book for anyone who wants to know, in detail, who Primo Levi was.

[Ben Wulfsohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very difficult book to read. It took me 3 attempts over a 12 year period. Once I got into it, it made great lockdown reading.

[Gerry Durisin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a good choice as an introductory work on Primo Levi, since the author assumes her reader already has a good bit of familiarity with Levi’s writings as well as his life. She’s extrapolated much of her biographical data from his writings, so this book tends to be as much literary analysis as biography, and as such was largely inaccessible to me and unhelpful in introducing me to the man some have called the most moral man of the twentieth century.

[tl]

it's true i have a thing for biographies

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great, great biography. Thoroughly researched, smartly written, sensitive and nuanced.

[Leon Perlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodreads rating 70