Primo Levi

Primo Levi (1919 to 1987) is widely recognised as the foremost literary witness to the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, Marco Belpoliti sets out his life, his path as a writer and intellectual, and above all the varied and complex body of work he left behind. The book is the product of twenty years of research. Levi was an Italian chemist and writer who survived Auschwitz.

The book is built like a mosaic, with one chapter for each of Levi's books. Each chapter traces how the book was written, published and shaped by literary influences, and then explores its contents across the many worlds Levi moved in: chemistry, anthropology, biology, ethology, space flight and linguistics. If This Is a Man, which publishers first turned down, is reread from a fresh angle.

Along the way Belpoliti takes up dreams, animals and travel, literary writing, comedy and tragedy, and shame and memory. He also looks at Levi's relationships with other writers, including Franz Kafka, Georges Perec, Jean Améry and Varlam Shalamov. Judaism, the camp and testimony run through the whole book. It is illustrated with photographs and letters the author found in archives that had not been explored before.