If This Is a Man

Everyman's Library (Aug 25, 2000)

9781857152227

| Hardcover

528 pages | 130 x 211 mm | English

$ 22.70 | Value: $ 22.70

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Dewey * 736.61

LC Classification Adult

Genre

Adult / Nonfiction / Autobiography / Memoir / Letters

Plot

If This Is a Man (Italian title: Se questo è un uomo; United States title Survival in Auschwitz) is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War. The book is described as a memoir, but it goes beyond mere recollection by seeking to consider in narrative form the human condition in all its extremes.

Personal

Owner	Holocaust Camps
Index	1574
Added Date	Jan 05, 2016 18:16:06
Modified Date	Jul 18, 2022 19:24:09

Value

Retail Price	$ 22.70
Value	$ 22.70

Notes

The most startling thing about If This is a Man is its quiet humanity. There is no towering rage, when there certainly could have been, there is no irrational hatred, when there could have been. There are terrible things in it, to be sure, but the subject of this book is the will to survive and persevere.

It is perhaps one of the most beautifully written books I have read.

Equally worthwhile is the second story, called The Truce, which is part of this book. It tells of Levi's incredible return voyage home across postwar Europe, taking a circuitous route in and around the countries bordering Russia and Germany, and finally landing in Turin.