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Primo Levi - Reviews - Book Review
Contemporary Review, Sept, 2002
Primo Levi. Ian Thomson. Hutchinson. [pounds sterling]25.00. 624 pages. ISBN 0-09-178531-6. The author, who was one of the last people to interview Primo Levi before his death, wisely chose not to base his biography on Levi's own autobiographical writings. Instead he interviewed more than 300 people who had known Levi, including his sister, the only member of his family to talk about the famous author.
He interviewed or corresponded with people in Italy, the UK, Poland, the US and Germany, people who had known Levi throughout his long and demanding life. As Mr Thomson writes, this 'secular humanist' in the end found his 'ultimate subject matter' to be his experiences in a concentration camp and his life amidst 'the moral and material ruins of post-Nazi Europe'. The author accepts that Levi was 'a difficult and complicated man' who suffered from depression in later life yet he was also loved by thousands of those who read his books. This is a learned and sympathetic biography of a writer whose private life was criss-crossed by emotional ties, the severing of which helped lead him to suicide.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
