זמן שאול

by Primo Levi

שלושה מחזורים. בסיפור "זמן שאול" כותב פרימו לוי על ג'וזפה, בעל חנות בדים קטנה: "עייף ממכירת בדים, עייף מלהיות ג'וזפה, עייף מלהיות עייף". יום אחד נכנס לחנותו אדם, ואגב שיחה מודיע לו שהוא נשלח מלמעלה לבשר לו שדינו נגזר. ההוצאה לפועל נקבעה למועד כלשהו בעתיד. לפי שעה זוהי רק אזהרה למקרה שירצה לרכוש לעצמו בטחונות מוקדמים, אבל "מעתה זמנו הוא זמן שאול". פרימו לוי (1987-1919), יליד טורינו וכימאי במקצועו, התפרסם בעקבות כתיבתו האוטוביוגרפית על מחנה ההשמדה אושוויץ, שבו היה כלוא בשנים 1945-1944. בכתביו בולט הניסיון להאיר את רגעי החסד וההקלה הבודדים בתוך התופת של מחנה הריכוז. ספריו של לוי תורגמו לשפות רבות והוא הרחיב את כתיבתו לעלילות דמיוניות ולנושאים, שאינם נוגעים בגלוי לשואה.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Italy, Holocaust, Literature, Jewish, Italian Literature

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor whose literary work has had a profound impact on how the world understands the Holocaust and its aftermath. Born in Turin in 1919, he studied chemistry at the University of Turin and graduated in 1941. During World War II, Levi joined the Italian resistance, but was captured by Fascist forces in 1943. Because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, where he endured ten harrowing months before being liberated by the Red army.

After the war, Levi returned to Turin and resumed work as a chemist, but also began writing about his experiences. His first book, If This Is a Man (published in the U.S. as Survival in Auschwitz), is widely regarded as one of the most important Holocaust memoirs ever written. Known for its clarity, restraint, and moral depth, the book offers a powerful testimony of life inside the concentration camp. Levi went on to write several more works, including The Truce, a sequel recounting his long journey home after liberation, and The Periodic Table, a unique blend of memoir and scientific reflection, in which each chapter is named after a chemical element.

Throughout his writing, Levi combined scientific precision with literary grace, reflecting on human dignity, morality, and survival. His later works included fiction, essays, and poetry, all characterized by his lucid style and philosophical insight. Levi also addressed broader issues of science, ethics, and memory, positioning himself as a key voice in post-war European literature.

Despite his success, Levi struggled with depression in his later years, and in 1987 he died after falling from the stairwell of his apartment building in Turin. While officially ruled a suicide, the exact circumstances of his death remain a subject of debate. Nevertheless, his legacy endures. Primo Levi’s body of work remains essential reading for its deep humanity, intellectual rigor, and unwavering commitment to bearing witness.

Reviews

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

167th book of 2020.

My friend, L. (who is a good ten years older than I am), was married last year and in October, we went to Brighton for his stag-do; long story short, I was horribly drunk and remember talking on and on at poor W., who was the only person left on the train from our party by the time we were nearing my home station again. Nothing of what I said remains in my memory, I only remember talking incessantly at him, with some emotion, about Primo Levi.

Levi is remembered primarily as an Auschwitz survivor; he has written a number of books about his own experiences: If This is a Man, The Truce, Moments of Reprieve, The Periodic Table, etc. Compiled here are his unpublished short stories, which surprised me very much. Though they range in genres, some even returning to flashes of his own life, others being humorous, many surreal, they all show a side of wit that I haven’t encountered yet in my reading of Levi. I want to talk about several stories in detail, but not all. Of course, as with all collections, some pale in light of others. That said, this is a strong body of work.

The book is split into “Early Stories” and “Later Stories.” There are five of the former: “The Death of Marinese”, “Bear Meat”, “Censorship in Bitinia”, “Knall” and “In the Park.” I want to mainly discuss the latter two. Though, before I do, “Censorship in Bitinia” is an odd story, and rather funny too. The highlights of this whole collection for me are the surreal ones, bordering on Borges and Calvino-like. For example: “Knall”. Like most of the stories in the collection, the story is rather “telling”—there are no scenes, per se, only Levi’s “reporting”. Usually, this puts me off. Any novel written by reporting events rather than “showing” the events fails in my eyes, unless done very well. As these are short stories, Levi gets away with it, and his tone is perfect, too. So, “Knall”? It is a killing-machine: A knall is a small, smooth cylinder, as long and thick as a Tuscan cigar, and not much heavier: it is sold loose or in boxes of twenty. Levi then describes its origin and its mode of killing:

Nothing is known about the mechanism by which the knall kills, or at least nothing about it has been published to date. Knall, in German, means crack, bang, crash; abknallen, in the slang of the Second World War, came to mean “kill with a firearm,” whereas the firing of a knall is typically silent. Maybe the name—unless it has a completely different origin, or is an abbreviation—alludes to the moment of death, which in effect is instantaneous: the person who is struck—even if only superficially, on the hand or on the ear—falls lifeless immediately, and the corpse shows no sign of trauma, except for a small ring-shaped bruise at the point of contact, along the knall’s geometric axis.

Levi creates a world, almost. He reports as if the knall truly does exist, in our world, as well as the story world. The brilliance of this story stands in the story alone, the description of this bizarre new killing weapon, perhaps derived from WWII slang. Like with Camus’ The Plague, when we consider the context the writers were writing in, The Plague is even more chilling than it already is when we consider it was, “[w]ritten just after the Nazi occupation of France, The Plague is a taut, visceral depiction of resistance against a seemingly uncontrollable evil.” Levi, then, a Holocaust survivor, and seeing the true evil of human beings, writes a story that gives anyone the opportunity to kill someone with a tiny cigar sized weapon. The knall’s existence in Levi’s world changes things.

Movie-going has decreased significantly, because audience habits have changed: those who go to the movies, alone or in groups, leave at least two seats between them and the other spectators, and, if this isn’t possible, often they prefer to turn in their tickets. The same thing happens on the trams, on the subways, and in the stadiums: people, in short, have developed a “crowd reflex”, similar to that of many animals, who can’t bear the close proximity of others of their kind.

That also sounds like today’s world, which makes it similar to The Plague, the breakdown of human contact, or the trust between humans. They might have the “plague” or they might have a “knall”, either way, you never know who is going to kill you—intentionally or not. Perhaps, certainly in the knall's case, that’s what the Second World War did: it made the average man, through circumstance, a killer.

The tone shifts now. Following “Knall” is Levi’s story, “In the Park”, which is now one of my favourite short stories, and one I will return to often, I think. It is a rather strange, surreal one again. Levi has invented a place where all the fictional characters in the world live and gives many, many examples, some whom I recognised and knew and some not. These are the names of everyone I recognised that the narrator sees in the story:

Papillon, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra (there are numerous versions of both, the guide tells them, We have five or six Cleopatras: Pushkin’s, Shaw’s, Gautier’s and so on. They can’t stand one another.), Pompey, Hannibal, Romulus, Livia, Pope Julius II, the Good Soldier Sweik, Pickwick, the Ancient Mariner (who says things that no one is listening to), the soldiers from All Quiet on the Western Front: Paul Baumer, Tjaden, Kat, Leer and others, Moll Flanders, Holden Caulfield (the most surprising mention!), Leopold Bloom, Dracula, Tristram Shandy, Bluebeard, Alyosha (Karamazov), the two dogs Flush and Buck (Buck being from The Call of the Wild, and I presume Flush is in reference of Virginia Woolf’s dog, but I may be wrong), Thérèse Raquin, Bel Ami…

There are many others named that I’ve never heard of, and a number of names in the book are footnoted, presumably because they are from old Italian books which are not as well-known anymore.

And, some literary places are mentioned: the house of Buddenbrooks and that of Usher side by side—a world where Thomas Mann and Poe are beside one another. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is referenced as well.

The ending of the story is brilliant and actually presents quite an amazing idea from Levi, but I won’t spoil it, instead, my favourite quotes from the guide:

I don’t think you’ll find a baker or an accountant […] you’ll look in vain for a plumber, an electrician, a welder, a mechanic, or a chemist, and I wonder why […] You’ll find a flood of explorers, lovers, cops and robbers, musicians, painters, and poets, countesses, prostitutes, warriors, knights, foundlings, bullies, and crowned heads. Prostitutes above all, in a percentage absolutely disproportionate to the actual need. In short, it’s better not to seek here an image of the world you left.

Here you will not find a sea captain who has not been shipwrecked, a wife who has not been an adulteress, a painter who does not live in poverty for long years and then become famous.

Levi writes a love letter to literature and also mocks it in this brilliant story. I like that the guide says you will not find a chemist here, as Levi himself was a chemist and perhaps knew a chemist-writer was fairly rare. As Julius Caesar and others were real figures, now fictionalised, Levi's own writing about his life has fictionalised himself—so, now there is a chemist "In the Park".


Levi, Picture from the PrimoLeviCentre

This is already a rather long review so I’ll be briefer with some of the “Later Stories”; they include: “The Magic Paint”, “Gladiators”, “The Fugitive”, “One Night”, “Fra Diavola”, “The Sorcerers”, “Bureau of Vital Statistics”, “The Girl in the Book”, “Buffet Dinner”, “The TV Fans from Delta Cep.”, “the Molecule’s Defiance” and “A Tranquil Star.” I shall discuss only two or three.

“The Magic Paint” is another witty story; the title is literal. In the realm of the story they are attempting, on request, to create a paint that causes good fortune. There’s more to the story, but I just want to include this brilliant part:

The opinion arrived two months later, and was highly favourable: he, Di Prima, had painted himself from head to foot, and then spent four hours under a ladder, on a Friday, in the company of thirteen black cats, without coming to any harm.

Chiovatero also tried it [and] all the traffic lights he came to were green, he never got a busy signal on the telephone, his girlfriend made up with him, and he ever won a modest prize in the lottery. Naturally it all came to an end after he took a bath.

“One Night”, I won’t quote, or even say much about, only that it is five pages long and details a train coming to a halt when its wheels are congested with leaves one night and a horde of dwarves emerge from the forest beside it, and slowly, piece by piece, dismantle the train and part of the tracks and carry it back into the forest whence they came. Similarly, “The Fugitive” is a small story about a poet whose poem literally runs away, and hides from, causing him great distress attempting to “capture” it again, before it eludes him altogether.

Finally, “The Bureau of Vital Statistics” takes us into the world of a man, Arrigo, working, what seems at first, a boring 9-5 office job, until we realise his job is deciding how people die. Everyday he is given a wad of paper containing random people on the planet and the day they have to die—his job is to decide how they do.

The expiration date wasn’t always the same: it could be years ahead, or months or days, for no apparent reason, he felt that this was an injustice. Nor did it seem reasonable that there were no rules regarding age: some days he was handed hundreds of cards for newborns. Then, the boss complained if Arrigo kept to generic formulas: the man must be a sadist or a fan of crime news. It wasn’t enough for Arrigo to write “accident.” He wanted all the details and was never satisfied.

One example from the piece, Arrigo has a man fall from a scaffold: he wouldn’t suffer much.

So, looking back through the collection and thinking about Levi and his life, I find the stories doubly haunting. The flippant, almost comical killing of Arrigo’s job, or the idea of people walking around with the knall in their pocket, capable of silently killing anyone in a cinema or a subway. The surreal, the terrifying and the humorous all join as one in Levi’s short stories, creating worlds of death, science, magic and literature.

[Alex Gunsean · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.0/10

Primo Levi is a writer primarily known for his trilogy of memoirs about his time at Auschwitz, so I was very interested to read these 17 short stories that he wrote across his lifetime that were previously unpublished in English. At face value it seems that variety is the word for this collection, with different genres and themes being used, some comedic, some sci fi, some poetical writing - and it is true that there is certainly variety. However, something in the way that Primo Levi writes in each story, almost casual but very meaningful, something behind the words that radiates an unexplainable feeling when reading, something which makes the stories somehow similar in their stark difference, an atmosphere generated after every line.

It is clear to me that Primo Levi has messages in these stories, and with some this is much more obvious than others. In stories like ’Bear Meat’ there is the message of, to put it in simpler words, don’t act foolishly when confident. There are sometimes more underlying messages or statements, like in ‘Censorship in Bitinia’, there is a clear theme of suppression, something which Levi faced, but in the same story as the comedic element of the job being passed to chickens, even with a chicken’s footprint as a signature. Some stories in this anthology are incredibly interesting, on their own five stars, and some are less enthralling - sometimes Levi’s writing not fitting with the short nature of a short story. Two of my favourites are ‘Knall’ and ‘The Fugitive’. Knall is about a device called a knall that can kill leaving just a small mark and the response on how to deal with it and its rising popularity. This story is an imaginative and unique idea, of which there are lots of, something which may not be expected by a holocaust survivor and memoir writer. The same goes with ‘The Fugitive’, which is about a man who has a supernatural burst of wisdom in which he writes a perfect poem, but the poem escapes after he does not capitalise on it even after knowing it is perfect, a message on not wasting chances.

It is a fun experience reading an anthology in which you go from reading ‘Gladiators’, a story about gladiators fighting modern cars, and then reading ‘Fra Diovolo On The Po’, an autobiographical recount of Levi’s short-lived military career. Sometimes it feels as though some stories are not cut out to be so short, and sometimes Levi’s well-written but extensive rambles can take up a large portion of a story. Some are not meant to be taken as groundbreaking literary masterpieces, instead just entertaining and though-provoking stories. However, on the whole, Primo Levi’s enticing writing style and vast range of ideas make A Tranquil Star a very interesting read, but perhaps overanalysed due to its writer.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now I know Levi from his writings about the Holocaust and his time in the concentrations camps so when I saw this collection on the shelf in the library I just had to give it a go, if only to find out about him as a writer and not just a survivor. And do you know what, I was not disappointed. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed each story as each one showed a different side to his skills as a writer and as a story-teller, an aspect that probably gets frequently overlooked. This collection of stories mixes fantasy, science fiction, horror, biography and humour across seventeen very different tales, some from Levi's own life and others from his own imagination. One of my favourites was Buffet Dinner that tells of a rather unusual guest and his difficulties fitting in (including a small issue with going up and down stairs). Another was In The Park that describes the place where literary characters live and interact with each other, from the well known to the supporting acts. I did also find Censorship in Bitinia rather amusing and even snorted (yes snorted!) at the end. This is an excellent collection that shows Levi's skills and shows that he was so much more than the survivor we knew him to be, he was a story teller and a fine one at that.

[Moshe Mikanovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not all the short stories in this collection are finished or like stories, but I liked the overall feeling. Levi was a very talented writer; and he was more then just the work that defined him as an Holocaust survivor.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because these stories are generally quite short, I found it hard to write individual reviews for them. While there were some stories I really enjoyed, there were many that were boring or relied too heavily on the reader's outside knowledge. By far the best story of the collection was the titular "A Tranquil Star."
I know in the future I will read more of Levi's work just because of his importance in Jewish literary canon, but in the end, I found this first introduction to be particularly underwhelming.

On the translator's introduction: I'll never understand why introductions to short story collections so often feel the need to spoil half the stories in the intro. They're short stories, I'll get to them soon enough!
I am a big fan of the all female translation team, though.

Death of Marinese: 3/5
Bear Meat: 2/5
Censorship in Britinia: 4/5
Knall: 2/5
In the Park: 2/5
The Magic Paint: 4/5
Gladiators: 4/5
The Fugitive: 3/5
One Night: 3/5
Fra Diavolo on the Po: I refuse to rate this because it's a nonfiction account of Holocaust-related ordeals.
The Sorcerers: 1/5
Bureau of Vital Statistics: 3/5
The Girl in the Book: 4/5
Buffet Dinner: 2/5
The TV Fans from Delta Cep.: 4/5
The Molecule's Defiance: 3/5
A Tranquil Star: 5/5

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are times when I pick a book at random off a library shelf and don't regret it at all. This slim volume caught my eye for no particular reason but turned out to be one of the best collections of short stories I've read for a long time (probably since J.G. Ballard's Vermilion Sands in 2001, if we're going to be pedantic.) I had heard of Primo Levi and knew he'd written a book called The Periodic Table that was named "the best science book ever" by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. I also had an idea he was an Auschwitz survivor, but that was the total of my knowledge.

Now I know better. I'm acutely aware that he was not only a scientist and an opponent of Fascism but also an excellent fiction writer. The stories in A Tranquil Star are worthy of Italo Calvino, and in many ways they resemble Calvino's own visions. Conceptual agility is the key phrase in any summary of the tales contained in this book: a truly profound scientific and philosophical intelligence underpins each text, and yet the formal mental rigour never weakens or obscures the artistic heart. Choosing a favourite piece from the seventeen on display here is a task fraught with difficulty, but 'One Night' stands out as almost unbearably odd and eerie: a train is forced to a stop by a mass of fallen leaves in a desolate landscape and falls victim to a tribe of dwarves who methodically dismantle it and the track it stands on, carrying each rivet and metal plate back into the forest.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially excitement.

But a cheat by the publishers.

These are NOT unpublished stories at all.
All have been published in Italian for awhile.
For some this seems to be their first rendering into English.
Others a second rendering into English.
But a cover that proclaims "UNPUBLISHED STORIES" is meant to be misleading to SELL.
And from PENGUIN BOOKS not to be expected.
The Barbarians have taken over Education so why not the Bookworld???

Another gripe.
It is not mentioned that Levi committed suicide in his brief end flap biography.
Is this another 'white lie' from this American Penguin publisher?
Too nasty to mention?
Too much like a self-inflicted euthanasia?
A Political-Correctness symptomatic of America's malaise and decline?

THE STORIES:
These are not the conventional "story" at all.
Much freer.
Often short, surreal, obsessively honing one image.
Like essays really.
So another misnomer from the Publishers.

Thankfully it IS Primo Levi.

The collection demands to be reread...perhaps a few times.
And I have found recent revisiting worthwhile.
The few that do merit the conventional title of "short story"are excellent.
One describes the last moments of a suicide-bomber
- he's an Italian partisan hoping to take out his truckload of Nazi captors-
so we can safely cheer him, sympathise and perhaps even get to understand
the current terrorists.(Amazing that Penguin didn't censor the whole tale!!!)

Another, "Bear Meat", describes two separate groups of male mountain climbers
who recount/listen to tales of Youth's impetuousness and opportunity
to live on the edge, "free to make mistakes" and of "being your own master"
and of "being drunk in your freedom".
One of the three narrators recognises these quoted phrases above
as having their origin not with mountain climbers but with a sailor
in his book "dear to me...who had written of the gifts of the sea."
Primo Levi is here acknowledging his debt to that famous examiner
of men's lives in rare or precarious moral and physical situations, Joseph Conrad.
Primo Levi had experienced such situations in the most infamous of testing grounds,
...his were not gifts of the sea, but gifts of Auschwitz.

Thanks Primo.

[Andrew]

Most people-- myself included-- mostly know Primo Levi from his Holocaust-related prose, but here he joins his fellow Italians Eco and Calvino in crafting these curious little fables rooted in the natural and social sciences. In fact, these stories are downright breezy compared to his dark, better-known texts like The Periodic Table and The Drowned and the Saved. And yet in all of these stories, the threat of totalitarianism lurks around the margins. What seems like a cute story at first conceals a blade.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imaginative. Captivating. Precise. And carefully crafted.

[Tisha (IG: Bluestocking629) · Rating 1 out of 5]

It pains me to give a book one star! It truly does.

The first short story could have been great, but instead I found it lacking.

The second story I actually enjoyed (Mountain climbing). I could have kept reading had it been longer.

It went downhill quickly. I hated most stories after that. The fifth story....no. Just no. Not sure what I read. The ending was so unattached.

I kept reading the book and kept getting madder and madder. Why did I keep reading it?

I slapped my forehead numerous times. One short story I swear the writer got up from his typewriter for a coffee and the Dennis the Menace type of neighbor broke into his house and finished the story for him.

I need to make it known I love short stories normally. It’s not that I am opposed to them. Just to these particular short stories.

Sigh.

[Phillip Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag - enough to make me want to read more by him.

Referred to as unpublished stories (though seemingly most have been published in Italian, and a large portion have been translated to English), some often also feel unfinished - a thought noted down, but not fleshed out enough, even for a short story.

The stories vary in genre, including real life accounts, fantasy, sci-fi, and mysterious vignettes.

Of particular interest were:

•The Death of Marinese
•Bear Meat
•One Night (a favourite and the most mysterious)
•Bureau of Vital Statistics

[Bonnie G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Levi's writing, (he writes with the no nonsense precision of the chemist he was) and was excited to read work not focused on his time in Auschwitz. There was some good work here, but there was a lot that felt (and some definitely was) unfinished, fragmentary or at least unrealized. I understand the drive to share every scrap of the work of a genius, I have learned more from several exhibits of Leonardo's notebooks than I have from dozens of viewings of completed work. But for me that was not the case here. Glad to have read it for the good pieces, and I was intrigued by some of the scraps, but my rereads belong to Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who knew Levi had a penchant for fantasist storytelling? Several of the stories in here are whimsical, and it was a treat to experience since I've only read the heavy works by Levi. "Bureau of Vital Statistics" was my favorite, but "In the Park" was neat, the place where book characters go to live before they fade away.

Even the stories that seemed more like a brief chronicle from his real life rather than a complete short story had worth--like the following line:

"We were at that age when you have the need and the instinct and the immodesty to inflict on others everything that is seething in your head and elsewhere; it's an age that can last a long time, but ends at the first compromise."

And, in the aforementioned story where characters from books reside, the wonderful confirmation that my own assertion that there are too many prostitutes in fiction--nearly all written by men, usually as some sort of plot device to move their male protagonists emotionally or otherwise--, comes the line from the guide about who lives in the town, "Prostitutes above all, in a percentage absolutely disproportionate to actual need."

[Jamie Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A TRANQUIL STAR

I remember being blown away by this story when I read it in the New Yorker. It's what led me to get this book and it holds up. Boy is this a good short story. I feel like it might make a good monologue

THE BOOK OVERALL

All of the stories in this book are great. Some of them are exceptional. I am really happy I read this book and I think anyone who enjoys short stories will enjoy it as well.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

'A Tranquil Star' -- the last of seventeen short stories which gives its name to this selection of previously unpublished pieces in translation -- is as good a place as any to start a consideration of this collection. It begins with a discussion of the inadequacy of superlatives (immense, colossal, extraordinary) to give indications of comparative size, especially when it comes to stars. Al-Ludra is the now not-so-tranquil star when it comes to its convulsive, cataclysmic end; how to describe an event which is beyond the comprehension of most, an event that is measured "not in millions or billions of years but of hours and minutes"? All we can do is relate its death to the impact it has on a human being, something we can more easily understand. On October 19th 1950 Ramón Escojido, a Peruvian married to his Austrian wife Judith, notices something unusual in photos taken from his mountain observatory. His dilemma is this: does he assume it's a blemish on his photographic plate of the night sky, or does he cancel the planned family excursion to double-check if, in fact, it's really a supernova?

While some stories may seem impersonal at first sight, underlying them all is the all-too-human individual. They may range from the semi-autobiographical to the deeply satirical but it's the humanity that Levi is known for that comes across. 'The Death of Marinese', the earliest tale and the one that opens this collection, is about the Italian resistance: two partisans are captured by the Germans, and one tries to summon up the strength and courage to ensure he doesn't go down without a fight and the chance to inflict damage on his country's enemies. Detailing what goes through Marinese's thoughts in his last few minutes is powerful evidence of Levi's ability to enter another's mind; it helps to know that Levi experienced something very similar in 1943. 'Bear Meat', set in the mountains around Turin, is a Russian dolls nest of tales about climbing, with daring and machismo as aspects of the recklessness that marks out the teenage male. 'Fra Diavolo on the Po' is a piece of black humour, being a memoir of his wartime military career -- such as it was.

Another tale that strongly held my attention was 'The Sorcerers'. We are all familiar with the notion of modern Westerners impressing isolated peoples with their technology, giving the impression that they can wield magic; H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines is a good fictional exemplar. What happens when, for example, two English anthropologists studying the Siriono tribe in eastern Bolivia, suddenly find themselves bereft of that technology, and are imprisoned until they can reproduce it? Will they last out until outside help comes? The Siriono too seem themselves unable to reproduce some of the technology of their forebears, for example the ability to make fire. Levi's conclusion, that "not in every place and not in every era is humanity destined to advance" is apt not just for the Siriono but also for the supposedly superior Europeans studying them.

At another extreme are almost unclassifiable pieces, part satire, part allegory, part science fiction but all fantastical. 'In the Park' concerns the afterlife of famous characters from fiction in limbo: some are entirely made-up, others are various versions of real-life individuals (for example there the several Cleopatras, by Shakespeare, Pushkin, Shaw and Gautier, who reportedly "can't stand one another"). One Antonio Casella is a newcomer to the Park; it turns out [1] that in an attempt to enter it he has written his own biography, "building himself as a compelling, fascinating, worth remembering character". Though he successfully stays in the Park he nevertheless finds that after three years he is -- literally -- fading into obscurity.

Many of Levi's tales involve technology that doesn't necessarily bring benefits to humankind. 'Knall' begins by describing an innovation that appears to be a novelty designed to appeal to the masses. It turns out to be an instantly disposable weapon, like drugs freely available if you know where to look, an object of almost religious and certainly ritual adoration, regarded often as benign whereas it is in truth lethal. If we substitute any mass-produced object or product currently accepted by society (often with equanimity) despite its capacity to kill and injure -- private transport, tobacco, guns, even sugar for example -- we can see the point that Levi is trying to make with his concept of the knell.

Two stories in particular are influenced by his long association with the Italian paint industry. 'The Magic Paint' describes the invention of a formula which ensures that whatever is coated with the paint brings good luck; unfortunately it also reflects bad luck so it rebounds, with fatal consequences. This is such a potent parable, the equivalent of letting the genie out of the bottle. The second tale, 'The Molecule's Defiance' is a reminder that, despite our confidence in mastering technology, such as manufacturing paint to a consistent specification, things can still be beyond our control.

His tales, whether told in a light or a darker tone, all have something profound to say about the human condition. The strongest, to my mind, is an extended metaphor Levi creates that speak of the experience he is best known for, his year in Auschwitz. 'One Night' describes a train hurtling along a wooded plateau as night falls. Dead leaves litter the track, forcing the train to slow, then finally stop. Out of the woods emerge "a group of cautious little people. They were men and women of short stature, slim, in dark clothes..." They proceed to demolish the train and its engine, piece by piece, until at sunrise nothing remains of the train. This image must surely haunt every reader, much as it may have haunted Levi.

This is a marvellous selection: caustic commentaries on censorship and fascism, humorous tales where our perceptions are played with, and even a melancholy love story. I was impressed and pleasantly surprised, given the serious matters that Levi is usually associated with. The translations by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli (only 'Censorship in Bitinia' is by Jenny McPhee) read as smoothly as if they were the originals, while Goldstein's informative introduction quote's Levi's opinion that "a story has as many meanings as there are keys in which it can be read". A fiction, he insists, must be ambiguous "or else it is a news story". Thus these are stories to read and re-read, for each reading brings a new interpretation; and, he suggests, "all interpretations are true".

* * * * *

[1] Anna Baldini 'Primo Levi’s Imaginary Encounters: Lavoro Creativo and Nel Parco' https://www.academia.edu/ Accessed 17.10.15


http://wp.me/s2oNj1-tranquil

[Chaitra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting much out of this collection, because they were unpublished until selected to appear in a collection together, right after Primo Levi's death. These weren't his A-Team. However, they're all beautiful, and they don't go on a minute longer than needed (a must for a short story) and I'm very glad that they got published.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really adored ‘in the park’ in particular

[Kandi West · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these short stories after learning about Primo Levi and his life.

[Varvara · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not bad just boring

[John Sperling · Rating 2 out of 5]

If, as Saul Bellow wrote of Levi's autobiography The Periodic Table, "There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential", one can't say the same for A Tranquil Star. Some of these stories, interesting as their core ideas are, ranging from historical fiction to autobiography to science fiction, seem irresponsibly written and unfinished. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Levi had developed these stories to their full potential. For me, however, there is indeed a shining star, a story called Bear Meat, which has echoes of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which was written less than ten years prior to Levi's work.

"...it wasn't worth being twenty-one if you didn't allow yourself the luxury of taking the wrong path...That was bear meat. Now, you must believe me, gentlemen, many years have passed, and I regret having eaten so little of it. I think and hope that each of you has gleaned from life what I have-a certain measure of ease, respect, love, and success. Well, I'll tell you the truth, none of these things, not even remotely, has the taste of bear meat: the taste of being strong and free, which means free to make mistakes; the taste of feeling young in the mountains, of being your own master, which means master of the world."

Edit: It is essential to be free. But the conditions of this freedom are perhaps not so vast as Levi supposes here. As Saint-Exupery said, "there is no freedom but the freedom of the mind". Perhaps that it is the essential thing. But there are other essential things, such as love and friendship, which are capable of being crushed in the name of individual freedom. Not to say that bear meat doesn't have its place at the table, so to speak, but that Levi's emphasis on individual freedom is solipsistic. Nothing exists in and of itself. Allow that a primary emphasis on individual freedom may have a negative impact on relationship and friendship, and that the individual exists in relationship to a cosmic process, a world, and others: relationships which are essential and not to be neglected; relationships by which self can achieve its' highest potential. Yes, a vision quest may be necessary. And it may, in fact, be the apex of a journey, the apotheosis of a life. But no single experience or moment is the summation of the journey, of the pilgrimage which is taking place in every moment.

[Vel Veeter]

I know Primo Levi primarily from his personal narratives. He is an Auschwitz survivor, and many of his most famous writings relate his various experiences during that time. Some of his other writings discuss his work as a chemist or his brief stint in the Italian army before the war.

This collection of short stories began in a similar vein. The very first story is about a captured Italian partisan who has the opportunity to set of a opportunistically positioned German grenade. As I was listening to this story (I listened to the recent audiobook version of this collection read by David Colacci), I was struck by how in the moment this story felt. I also mistakenly thought it was going to set the tone for this collection. In the follow-up story “Bear Meat” I began to wonder where I was being taken. In this story, a group of mountain climbers tell stories of previously foolish ventures that they went on and the lessons they learned from these, as well as the experiences of growth stemming from these.

From there, well, I am not sure what to tell you. Mostly science fiction? A story told from the perspective of a kangaroo at a dinner party?

Throughout the rest of the stories there’s a really strange mix of science fiction, fantasy, absurdism, and not-quite realistic fiction. These stories feel like a strange mix of Philip K Dick/Robert Sheckley, John Updike at times, and primarily a kind of late 20th century Italian Borges. These tales are not particularly cohesive and yet, still work as a functional collection.

I am much more interested in reading from the Primo Levi collection I bought last year knowing that it contains more weirdness. I do want to read the Holocaust narratives, but knowing it is interspersed with these types is heartening.

The translation is really good too. You might know Anne Goldstein from her work translating Elena Ferrante and her solid work and introductory material continues here.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

An endearing collection of short stories from an author better known for his writings on the Holocaust. And I really cannot emphasize "short" enough - most of these are exceptionally brief, typically only a few pages. But their brevity lends them an interesting narrative frame, with the concision lending each piece an almost fable-like quality. Some stories are contemplative, some are droll (and while use of the word "droll" might seem like an unnecessarily pretentious choice - one I would prefer not to opt for - it most adequately captures Levi's sense of humor. Though the humor is pronounced and noticable, his works are neither funny nor hilarious. However, one's unlikeliness to laugh out loud or even chuckle quietly to one's self should not be taken as a suggestion that the wit lacks any richness or character. The opposite, really.) but all make themselves known then quickly disappear like some sort of strange bedtime story or half-remembered dream. Not wholly unlike Calvino or Borges, though the similarities exist more in tone than in direct, literal allegiance, Levi's short fiction acts as a strange but memorable universe of men throwing hammers at cars for sport, astral bodies imbued with human emotion, and diminutive forest dwellers dismantling trains. I don't always grasp the underlying metaphor at work, but the prose was so well articulated it hardly mattered.

[CuriousBookReviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curiosity level: Sci-fi-ish stories of dystopian quality
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"For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable..."
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A collection of short stories of dystopian-ish, sci-fi nature. Some of them possess the quiet horror that is the stuff of nightmares, and you can almost hear eerie strings playing in the background. All in all, four stories stood out most for me.
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1. Censorship in Bitania: What happens when mankind has driven itself to madness and inefficiency, and thus entrusting rulership to the animal kingdom?
2. The Fugitive: A man thinks he has written the best poem of his life, and then...
3. Bureau of Vital Statistics: A bunch of people play god by ascertaining how several people die...
4. TV fans from Delta Cepheid: Aliens from another planet loves earth's tomato commercials and writes in to the Editors
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Every story is wild and unique, and never fails to surprise. If you're feeling a bit adventurous and slightly wonky, I encourage you to read this little collection by Levi :)
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Suitable for: People interested in space-y, outlandish and out-of-this-world-friendly-dystopian stories 📺👽🚀

[Bill Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly misleading title. Not exactly unpublished, as it lists original publication dates at the back, but unpublished as a collection in English in the United States. A mix of imaginative short stories, science fiction, fantasy and allegories. Probably the most interesting is the short autobiographical piece about joining the fascist army at the start of the war. Not an easy choice, and really forced. A short-lived military career before then being rejected as a Jew and sent to Auschwitz, a part of his life covered in other writings. Levi is a great writer and describes the life in the camps with extraordinary honesty. If this is a Man was a life-changing read for me. So, this volume does feel a little like digging deep into what is left to publish. Not a good place to start to understand Levi, but entertaining to read with occasional insights in what it is to be human.

[VJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are five stories in this collection that I absolutely love. The rest of the stories are extremely lucid, written plainly and straightforwardly, but they may be a bit too subtle for me.

Levi's stories are unlike any I've read before in that they seem to be more like anecdotes, or stories shared between friends before a fire, over a snifter of brandy. They don't have traditional beginnings, middles, and endings. The stories are more like scenes that we are brought to in the middle of the action.

My favorite of the five is The Magic Paint, which offers no excuses for the accidental killing of a colleague whom the replicators of the paint's constituents hoped to help by applying the paint to his glasses. I'll tell no more.

[Prooost Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Tranquil Star is a collection of Primo Levi's fiction, and more than a few of the stories struck me more as academic exercises than fully developed works. Levi had a wonderful imagination, though, and thought up plenty of novel ideas.

The title story is the best one, an amazing one, really, that in a few pages tells us about the inadequacy of human language to describe the universe as we know it now; what it would be like to be living on a planet whose star has just gone nova; the celestial observations of Arabs during a time when European science had gone to sleep; and the complicated personal life of the astronomer who has just now discovered this nova on one of his photographic plates.

[Panthère Rousse · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Tranquil Star est un recueil de 17 brèves nouvelles de Primo Levi. Elles ont été écrites à diverses époques (la première remonte à 1949), L'ensemble est inégal, mais certaines nouvelles sont intéressantes, comme Gladiators, où des gladiateurs affrontent des automobilistes dans une arène. One Night est une histoire troublante, un train qui s'immobilise sur des rails à cause de feuilles mortes. Je crois que ma préférée est The Magic Paint, qui parle d'une sorte de peinture pour attirer la chance. The Sorcerers démontre comment l'homme moderne ne sait pas fabriquer ce dont il a besoin dans la vie de tous les jours.

[Florence Caplow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primo Levi always cheers me up - his gentle humor, his depth, his love of the mysteries of the world. I found this collection of short stories tremendously satisfying. It would be so fun to read his work n Italian, because so much of his work is about language, but even in English something lovely and subtle comes through. Considering that Primo Levi was an Auschwitz survivor, his sensibilities are even more astonishing.

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd like to give this a solid 2.5 stars but we all know Goodreads won't let me.

What I liked about these stories were their uniqueness. Levi's proclivity toward scientific terms and descriptions was interesting, however these didn't flow like the average short story. Some of them just started and ended with no real meaning. My favorite of them all was of course nonfiction, as Levi did have a talent for sharing his past with the world. May he rest in peace.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't actually read all the stories--though I thought they were good, I got tired of the sort of bite-sized format. Bear Meat, which I read in a magazine at some point, is wonderful. Even better was A Tranquil Star, a meditation on the failures of language--a neat way to end a story collection.