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Primo Levi: A Biography
'One of the best literary biographies of the year...superb... Levi, I think, would have appreciated it' Observer Re-issued to mark the centenary of Primo Levis birth, now featuring a new introduction from the author.Discover the definitive biography of the iconic writer and Holocaust survivor.On 11 April 1987 the Italian writer and chemist 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 seemed that Levi had taken his own life. His account of Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, is recognised as one of the essential books of mankind.Ian Thomson spent over ten years in Italy and elsewhere researching and writing this matchless biography. This incomparable book unravels the strands of a life caught between the factory and the typewriter, family and friends. Deeply researched, it sheds new light on Levi's recurring depressions and unearths vital information about his premature death.
640 pages, Paperback
First published December 30, 1999
36 people are currently reading
294 people want to read
About the author
Ian Thomson
78 books9 followersIan Thomson is an English author and journalist, best known for his meticulously researched biography Primo Levi: A Life and his controversial and acclaimed reportage The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica. Born in London in 1961 and raised partly in New York City, he studied English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before embarking on a career as a writer, translator, and teacher.
Thomson’s writing spans biography, travel, history, and literary journalism. His first major work, Bonjour Blanc: A Journey Through Haiti, was praised for its vivid and gripping portrayal of the country’s complex history and culture. His biography of Primo Levi, which took a decade to complete, has been widely regarded as the definitive account of the Italian Holocaust survivor’s life and won the Royal Society of Literature’s W.H. Heinemann Award.
His 2009 book The Dead Yard offered an unflinching exploration of modern Jamaica and received both the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book Award. In addition to his books, Thomson has edited collections, translated Italian literature (notably Leonardo Sciascia), and written for leading publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times Literary Supplement. He has also taught creative nonfiction and held fellowships at several academic institutions.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Thomson continues to write and teach. He lives in London with his family.
Thomson’s writing spans biography, travel, history, and literary journalism. His first major work, Bonjour Blanc: A Journey Through Haiti, was praised for its vivid and gripping portrayal of the country’s complex history and culture. His biography of Primo Levi, which took a decade to complete, has been widely regarded as the definitive account of the Italian Holocaust survivor’s life and won the Royal Society of Literature’s W.H. Heinemann Award.
His 2009 book The Dead Yard offered an unflinching exploration of modern Jamaica and received both the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book Award. In addition to his books, Thomson has edited collections, translated Italian literature (notably Leonardo Sciascia), and written for leading publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times Literary Supplement. He has also taught creative nonfiction and held fellowships at several academic institutions.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Thomson continues to write and teach. He lives in London with his family.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 3, 2021
“On 11 April 1987, a day of bright spring sunshine, Primo Levi fell to his death in the block of flats where he lived in Turin in northern Italy. He died in the same building where, in 1919, he had been born. The authorities pronounced a verdict of suicide. Levi, at only sixty-seven, had pitched himself three flights down the stairwell: life had become intolerably dark and cheerless for him.” is the opening paragraph of the Introduction to this biography.
Primo Levi* (1919-1987) was born in Turin, Italy. He was a scientist (physics and chemistry), a partisan, an enthusiastic mountaineer and an author of fiction and nonfiction. To quote author Ian Thomson: ”In Italy, Levi is a national monument.”.
But Levi was Jewish and a partisan, and was first sent to an internment camp in Italy and from there to the German concentration camp Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz he had become 174517, indicating that he was no longer a person, but simply an object, either to be destroyed or to be used as slave labour. Levi was grilled about his education, his knowledge, his thesis and his experience. ”Levi’s knowledge of physics, or rather physical chemistry, seemed to have impressed Pannwitz: physics, quite as much as chemistry, helped to save Levi’s life at Auschwitz.” He was employed in a laboratory until the end of the war when the survivors of these camps were finally liberated. Primo Levi wrote his famous testament of what he saw and experienced** at Auschwitz: ’Se questo è un uomo’/‘If This Is a Man’.
Ian Thomson interviewed Primo Levi nine months before Levi died, and he also interviewed as many friends, acquaintances and colleagues as possible. Levi was much more than prisoner 174517, and so the reader learns about his family and friends, his love of nature and mountaineering (he was fit and slim), his partisan work, subsequent capture and internment as mentioned above, as well as his work after leaving Auschwitz. Levi’s writing is discussed; he wrote novels, poems, essays and memoirs. He was friends with and knew several authors including Natalia Ginzburg, Italo Calvino, Philip Roth and others.
Included in this fine biography are photographs, notes, an introduction and a preface, a bibliography and an index.
###
*Primo Levi is not to be confused with Carlo Levi, the author of ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’, who was related to Primo Levi through marriage.
**”On his emergence from the P-M-Abteilung, Oscar contemptuously wiped some engine grease off his hand on to Levi’s shoulder, using him as a convenient rag. Forty years later Levi said this was the ‘greatest insult’ of his life; it was typical of the writer in Levi to see the large offence in the apparently small act.”
Primo Levi* (1919-1987) was born in Turin, Italy. He was a scientist (physics and chemistry), a partisan, an enthusiastic mountaineer and an author of fiction and nonfiction. To quote author Ian Thomson: ”In Italy, Levi is a national monument.”.
But Levi was Jewish and a partisan, and was first sent to an internment camp in Italy and from there to the German concentration camp Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz he had become 174517, indicating that he was no longer a person, but simply an object, either to be destroyed or to be used as slave labour. Levi was grilled about his education, his knowledge, his thesis and his experience. ”Levi’s knowledge of physics, or rather physical chemistry, seemed to have impressed Pannwitz: physics, quite as much as chemistry, helped to save Levi’s life at Auschwitz.” He was employed in a laboratory until the end of the war when the survivors of these camps were finally liberated. Primo Levi wrote his famous testament of what he saw and experienced** at Auschwitz: ’Se questo è un uomo’/‘If This Is a Man’.
Ian Thomson interviewed Primo Levi nine months before Levi died, and he also interviewed as many friends, acquaintances and colleagues as possible. Levi was much more than prisoner 174517, and so the reader learns about his family and friends, his love of nature and mountaineering (he was fit and slim), his partisan work, subsequent capture and internment as mentioned above, as well as his work after leaving Auschwitz. Levi’s writing is discussed; he wrote novels, poems, essays and memoirs. He was friends with and knew several authors including Natalia Ginzburg, Italo Calvino, Philip Roth and others.
Included in this fine biography are photographs, notes, an introduction and a preface, a bibliography and an index.
###
*Primo Levi is not to be confused with Carlo Levi, the author of ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’, who was related to Primo Levi through marriage.
**”On his emergence from the P-M-Abteilung, Oscar contemptuously wiped some engine grease off his hand on to Levi’s shoulder, using him as a convenient rag. Forty years later Levi said this was the ‘greatest insult’ of his life; it was typical of the writer in Levi to see the large offence in the apparently small act.”
January 17, 2022
4 stars for the incredible amount of research done by Thomson. That said, the avalanche of facts and details - including absolute minutia as well as extraneous facts about other people - rather buries Levi under all the notecards. Events can be summarized. Not everything is important! The writings are intelligently introduced and the suicide treated sensitively. But I can’t say that I actually got a sense of Levi from all the empirical data. Thomson says that the image of the centaur, which appears in a short story by Levi, was also used only by Jacques Tati. But Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist, and resident of Turin, famously uses the centaur as a metaphor for the division of the body politic, the state and civil society - or in Romantic terms, the head and the heart. This metaphor might have been usefully applied to Levi himself.
January 13, 2022
Superb.
May 25, 2020
This is a fascinating, in-depth account of the life and work of Primo Levi. I have read a couple of Levi's books and I started this one because my Reading Group was reading The Periodic Table and I wanted to know more about Levi himself.
This book begins with Levi's suicide and ends explaining that it is impossible to really know why Levi chose to die that way. As the book explains Levi did suffer from terrible depression and perhaps that was 'all' it was. Did his experiences during The Holocaust make this worse it seems impossible to know, but I suspect not? He seems to have channeled his experiences in Auschwitz in a different way: into witnessing. The book makes it clear that the semi-regular reemergence of Holocaust denial and neo-Fascism pained Levi. The book quotes Levi himself, "Daniel Toff asked Levi if he thought that the tendency was for people to forget Auschwitz. 'Signs do exist that this taking place: forgetting or even denying it. This is significant: those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.'" (p431)
Levi's personal life seemed to be a burden to him. People saw him trapped in his home by his elderly, infirm mother. He also seemed burdened by old age and the fears that this brings. But I am turning this review into a focus on his death, which is wrong.
Ian Thomson does a great service here by focusing on Levi's life and its living. He knits the biggers historical picture together with the specifics of Levi's life neatly and this is especially effective as the claws of Fascism, then Nazism dig into the Jewish community in Italy. I feel Thomson also does an excellent job of explaining Levi's post-War feelings about Germany and Germans and about forgiveness or lack of forgiveness.
Overall this is a good biography of a good man and a great writer. It is a reminder - to me anyway - of the importance of never forgetting or diminishing the Holocaust. But as Levi himself wanted not just to be defined by that event. He wanted to write not just about the Holocaust - and I wasn't aware that he wrote - and liked - science-fiction, for example. And again Thomson does a good job of making Levi a whole person.
Is this a man? Yes. Yes it is.
This book begins with Levi's suicide and ends explaining that it is impossible to really know why Levi chose to die that way. As the book explains Levi did suffer from terrible depression and perhaps that was 'all' it was. Did his experiences during The Holocaust make this worse it seems impossible to know, but I suspect not? He seems to have channeled his experiences in Auschwitz in a different way: into witnessing. The book makes it clear that the semi-regular reemergence of Holocaust denial and neo-Fascism pained Levi. The book quotes Levi himself, "Daniel Toff asked Levi if he thought that the tendency was for people to forget Auschwitz. 'Signs do exist that this taking place: forgetting or even denying it. This is significant: those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.'" (p431)
Levi's personal life seemed to be a burden to him. People saw him trapped in his home by his elderly, infirm mother. He also seemed burdened by old age and the fears that this brings. But I am turning this review into a focus on his death, which is wrong.
Ian Thomson does a great service here by focusing on Levi's life and its living. He knits the biggers historical picture together with the specifics of Levi's life neatly and this is especially effective as the claws of Fascism, then Nazism dig into the Jewish community in Italy. I feel Thomson also does an excellent job of explaining Levi's post-War feelings about Germany and Germans and about forgiveness or lack of forgiveness.
Overall this is a good biography of a good man and a great writer. It is a reminder - to me anyway - of the importance of never forgetting or diminishing the Holocaust. But as Levi himself wanted not just to be defined by that event. He wanted to write not just about the Holocaust - and I wasn't aware that he wrote - and liked - science-fiction, for example. And again Thomson does a good job of making Levi a whole person.
Is this a man? Yes. Yes it is.
August 31, 2023
I loved this book (and deeply admire Levi) - until I got bogged down in the endless details in which Levi's last years are described. It seemed that every conversation and thought was explored as we the reader reached his last sad, depressed years. And we learned so little about his long-suffering wife. Were their no friends or family of hers to interview? She worked during much of her marriage but we know little about her work; in Thomson's writing she is not really treated with respect. I assume that his two adult children did not want to be interviewed as we never hear their point of view - but the author never states that. So very good - but could have been much better.
September 18, 2021
非常详尽，有时甚至可以说是琐碎，但它的分量也是毋庸置疑的。
书中的两个细节，给我留下了极深的印象。
其一，是同为轴心国的意大利，在迫害犹太人上，表现出了和纳粹德国的巨大差异。哪怕是很多法西斯党徒，在迫害他们的犹太人朋友和邻居时也并不积极。事实上，在意大利德占区幸存下来的每一个犹太人，都得到过他们的朋友和邻居的帮助。连莱维自己也半开玩笑地说，和德国人的高效相比，在意大利人的无能和人道这两者之间，并非总是“没有联系”的。
其二，在战后的60年代，成百上千的德国青年，有时候是整个班级，都在给莱维写信。他们抱怨学校里那含糊其辞的历史课程，他们想要了解自己国家的过去。而这段过去，他们的父母辈在追问之下总是觉得难以启齿。“那是考验德国人良心的艰难时期”。
读到这里，我很难不联想到中国的处境。中国历史上沉重而不详的阴云之所以久久不散，恰恰是因为我们从来没有经历过这种痛苦而深刻的自我拷问。由此，莱维发出的警告便格外具有恒久且普世的价值：“那些否认奥斯威辛集中营存在的人随时可能再次犯下这种暴行……如果我们不能掌握过去，过去就会掌握我们。”
书中的两个细节，给我留下了极深的印象。
其一，是同为轴心国的意大利，在迫害犹太人上，表现出了和纳粹德国的巨大差异。哪怕是很多法西斯党徒，在迫害他们的犹太人朋友和邻居时也并不积极。事实上，在意大利德占区幸存下来的每一个犹太人，都得到过他们的朋友和邻居的帮助。连莱维自己也半开玩笑地说，和德国人的高效相比，在意大利人的无能和人道这两者之间，并非总是“没有联系”的。
其二，在战后的60年代，成百上千的德国青年，有时候是整个班级，都在给莱维写信。他们抱怨学校里那含糊其辞的历史课程，他们想要了解自己国家的过去。而这段过去，他们的父母辈在追问之下总是觉得难以启齿。“那是考验德国人良心的艰难时期”。
读到这里，我很难不联想到中国的处境。中国历史上沉重而不详的阴云之所以久久不散，恰恰是因为我们从来没有经历过这种痛苦而深刻的自我拷问。由此，莱维发出的警告便格外具有恒久且普世的价值：“那些否认奥斯威辛集中营存在的人随时可能再次犯下这种暴行……如果我们不能掌握过去，过去就会掌握我们。”
February 8, 2025
An incredible amount of research has gone into this book; maybe a little too much to be honest, by the last 100 pages I was getting a little antsy for it to be finished. I appreciate the enormous amount of work the author put into this book but I think some of the minutiae could have been trimmed and nothing would be lost.
One thing I did really appreciate though was the sensitive and non-judgemental way that Thomson discusses Primo Levi's suicide.
One thing I did really appreciate though was the sensitive and non-judgemental way that Thomson discusses Primo Levi's suicide.
July 7, 2025
This book is superb. I loved it. Ian Thomson is a true biographer; he takes you right into Primo Levi's soul. I couldn't put this book down and can't stop thinking about it and about Levi's life and thoughts. One of the best books I've ever read! I highly recommend it. Even if you're unfamiliar with Levi, you will know him thoroughly by the time you finish this book. "Masterpiece" sounds like a book review cliche, but there's no other word as perfect to describe Thomson's wonderful book.
August 8, 2021
This is a blow-by-blow, almost month-by-month, account of Levi's life. It is not an intellectual biography; although it does describe his work to some extent, it is more about his personal life and about how he managed to write books while having a normal job and a complicated family life. Despite the book's length, I was never bored.
August 2, 2017
una biografia molto approfondita, ma talmente minuziosa da suonare pettegola.
April 20, 2020
An extraordinary life, and an extraordinary accomplishment to do it justice in this bio. Recommended for anyone who loves writing or seeks to understand the human condition.
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September 28, 2011Primo Levi, judeu italiano, licenciado em Química, lutou contra a ocupação nazi até que um dia foi preso no campo de concentração em Auschwitz. Baseado na sua experiência de “estadia” neste campo, o autor escreve-nos este precioso testemunho que poucos sobreviveram para contar.
A certa altura, nesta obra, lemos “Ninguém deve sair daqui, pois poderia levar para o mundo, juntamente com a marca gravada na carne, a terrível notícia do que, em Auschwitz, o homem teve coragem de fazer ao homem.” No entanto, Primo Levi, saiu e publicou o seu testemunho. Não é um testemunho que pretende impressionar, nem acusar ninguém (como ele próprio refere) mas mostrar o que realmente aconteceu. Deixar um registo que, posteriormente possa servir de estudo à “alma” humana.
Os factos pelos quais passou, são contados de forma distanciada e ao mesmo tempo muito sentida, conta-nos até onde foi capaz de sobreviver, até quando os seus colegas aguentaram…O sofrimento foi imenso ao ponto de nos dizer que as palavras - fome e frio, teriam certamente outro significado para os milhares de prisioneiros cujas vidas foram abusadas e violadas nos seus direitos. E não o significado que nós, pessoas livres conhecemos…
Será que se podia chamar a todos aqueles prisioneiros homens?? Esta é a grande questão do livro, como o próprio título refere: “Se Isto é um Homem”
Este é um livro de leitura obrigatória e engana-se aquele que achar que este é simplesmente mais um livro sobre Auschwitz. É um relato único, que não pretende comover, mas relatar a realidade pela qual homens estiveram sujeitos, privados das condições básicas para sobreviver.
Aconselho!
A certa altura, nesta obra, lemos “Ninguém deve sair daqui, pois poderia levar para o mundo, juntamente com a marca gravada na carne, a terrível notícia do que, em Auschwitz, o homem teve coragem de fazer ao homem.” No entanto, Primo Levi, saiu e publicou o seu testemunho. Não é um testemunho que pretende impressionar, nem acusar ninguém (como ele próprio refere) mas mostrar o que realmente aconteceu. Deixar um registo que, posteriormente possa servir de estudo à “alma” humana.
Os factos pelos quais passou, são contados de forma distanciada e ao mesmo tempo muito sentida, conta-nos até onde foi capaz de sobreviver, até quando os seus colegas aguentaram…O sofrimento foi imenso ao ponto de nos dizer que as palavras - fome e frio, teriam certamente outro significado para os milhares de prisioneiros cujas vidas foram abusadas e violadas nos seus direitos. E não o significado que nós, pessoas livres conhecemos…
Será que se podia chamar a todos aqueles prisioneiros homens?? Esta é a grande questão do livro, como o próprio título refere: “Se Isto é um Homem”
Este é um livro de leitura obrigatória e engana-se aquele que achar que este é simplesmente mais um livro sobre Auschwitz. É um relato único, que não pretende comover, mas relatar a realidade pela qual homens estiveram sujeitos, privados das condições básicas para sobreviver.
Aconselho!
Want to read
January 26, 2011Added to wishlist after taking with Shellie
January 3, 2012
This is a superior biography, with thoughtful and balanced analysis.
July 26, 2012
I enjoyed this biography and was fascinated by Primo Levi and the ordinary yet amazing life he led.
June 14, 2013
Although I love the writing of Levi and found the first part of the book interesting I got bored and slightly depressed by the later part and did not in fact finish it.
July 25, 2016
An inspiring life.
November 10, 2020
Astounding. One of the most thorough and probing biographies I've ever read. In spite of the length and detail, it never deviates from the core of Levi's humanity.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews