If This Is A Man / The Truce

Primo Levi,

Paul Bailey

Primo Levi,

Paul Bailey

1947 • 392 pages

Ratings18

Average rating4.4

From a major contender for the Nobel Prize, this volume of Survival in Auschwitz, the Reawakening and Moments of Reprieve, contain some of the most unforgettable chronicles of our times, tells of Primo Levi's ten months in the hell of a Nazi death camp and the confused, frightening months after liberation. Without self-pity, but with passion, intensity and even humor, Levi recounts being thrust in 1944, at the age of 25, from ordinary life into a world of systematic cruelty, where survival depended on unspoken, illogical rules, where pain and death were a daily presence. Equally fascinating are all his portraits of the unusual companions, prisoners and guards, who fought to survive--and to hold on to the memory of what it felt like to be human.

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Series

Featured Series

3 primary books

#1-2 in Auschwitz Trilogy

Auschwitz Trilogy is a 3-book series with 3 released primary works first released in 1947 with contributions by Primo Levi.

If This Is a Man (Survival in Auschwitz)

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Jero

This book was brutal, brutal.... But one of the most thought and emotion provoking books I've read, a masterpiece.

Remember Hurbinek...

April 14, 2019

Lisa

I read this book because it appeared on James Mustich's “1000 Books to Read Before You Die” list. I'm now at 85/1000, haha!

I'd never heard of it, so despite my misgivings about Mustich's book (I'll review it one day) it is introducing me to books I never would have read.

It's easy to discern what it's about based on the cover. This is the autobiographical account of an Italian Jewish man who survived not only Auschwitz but the haphazard repatriation back to Italy in the hands of the Russian Army. It's beautiful, awful, exhausting, and somehow hopeful.

I do think it's a book everyone should read once.

March 24, 2020