Primo Levi

Primo Levi was a Jewish Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor, and author, born in 1919 in Turin, Italy. He was a sickly and frail child who grew up to be socially withdrawn, despite his academic prowess. Levi excelled in his studies and was one of the few Jews to earn a degree from the university before it was prohibited for them to attend. During the Holocaust, he became a partisan while his mother and sister hid from the police. Unfortunately, his partisan group was infiltrated, and he was caught, leading to his imprisonment in a labor camp in Italy and later at Auschwitz. Out of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, Levi was one of only twenty who survived and left the camps.

After the war, Levi started writing about his experiences through poetry and eventually published his debut novel, "If This Is A Man," in 1947. He is well-known for his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. His work "The Periodic Table," published in 1975, is a unique piece linking the qualities of the elements to his personal experiences. The Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever written. Levi's life and work continue to be an important part of the historical record of the Holocaust and its impact on individuals and communities.

Primo Michele Levi passed away in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. While his death was officially ruled a suicide, some evidence suggests the possibility that the fall was accidental. The Primo Levi Center, dedicated to studying the history and culture of Italian Jewry, was named in his honor.
Auschwitz Trilogy Books
# Title Year
1 Survival in Auschwitz 1947
2 The Reawakening 1963
3 The Drowned and the Saved 1986
Standalone Novels
# Title Year
1 The Monkey's Wrench 1978
2 If Not Now, When? 1982
3 The Magic Paint 2011
Poetry Collections
# Title Year
1 Shema 1981
2 Collected Poems 1981
3 The Survivor 1988
Collections
# Title Year
1 The Sixth Day And Other Tales 1966
2 The Periodic Table 1975
3 The Mirror Maker 1986
4 A Tranquil Star 1988
Non-Fiction Books
# Title Year
1 If This Is a Man & The Truce 1947
2 Moments of Reprieve 1981
3 The Search for Roots 1981
4 Conversations 1984
5 Dialogo 1984
6 Other People's Trades 1985
7 Auschwitz Report 1989
8 The Voice of Memory 1997
9 The Black Hole of Auschwitz 2004
10 Auschwitz Testimonies 2015
11 The Last Interview 2016
Primo Levi Anthologies
# Title Year
1 The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness 1969
2 Friendship 1990
3 On Suicide: Great Writers on the Ultimate Question 1992
4 Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology 1995
5 Writers: Their Lives and Works 2018