Bøger af Primo Levi

Primo Levis vidnesbyrd og refleksioner om Auschwitz for første gang samlet på dansk. Tre af det tyvende århundredes allervigtigste litterære værker i én bog. Den 13. december 1943 blev den italiensk-jødiske kemiker Primo Levi arresteret i Alperne og ført til dødslejren Auschwitz. Det er begyndelsen på en grum fortælling om, hvordan man overlever kz-lejrenes ubegribelige brutalitet og meningsløshed, om vejen tilbage til de levendes verden og ikke mindst om behovet for at aflægge vidnesbyrd. Til sammen er de tre værker Hvis dette er et menneske (1956), Tøbrud (1963) og De druknede og de frelste (1986) en dyster udforskning af det, vi forstår som menneskelighed, fyldt med visdom og sort humor på trods. Denne udgave samler for første gang Primo Levis tre bøger om Auschwitz på dansk. Pressen skriver: »En af det 20. århundredes absolut mest nødvendige bøger« – Philip Roth »...fremstår, til trods for at der er gået mere end 60 år, sprogligt med en uhyggelig klarhed og mangel på patos til trods for det ubærlige emne [...] Man kan lære meget af at læse Primo Levi . Han er en meget stor forfatter, og det er en beskæmmende nydelse at læse om hans ubærlige oplevelser fra Auschwitz og hans efterfølgende refleksioner over, hvordan man skal forstå den vilde civilisatoriske udskejelse, som Holocaust er. Gid at Levi med denne fornemme udgivelse vil få mange nye læsere.« – Peter Nielsen, Information »Hans vidnesbyrd hører trods deres modbydelige indhold – eller måske snarere netop i kraft af behandlingen af dette indhold: deres præcision, mangel på sentimentalitet, stramme sproglige økonomi, nuancerede betragtninger, humor og menneskelighed – til blandt litteraturens smukkeste, mest berigende værker og er for mig at se enestående.« – Jacob Lund, Standart »Levis bøger – i sær Hvis dette er et menneske – er selv små mirakler« – Hans Hertel, Politiken »Levis egen overlevelse prægedes af dyb skam, og han håndterer den i fuldt dagslys på bogens hvide sider, så ingen undslipper. « – Elisabeth Åsbrink, Weekendavisen

A chemist by training, the author became one of the witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In these haunting reflections inspired by the elements of the periodic table, he ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and 'inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for twenty-two years - to life-giving carbon.

With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a "e;magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known"e; - PHILIP ROTH

Primo Levi, the Italian-born chemist once described by Philip Roth as that "quicksilver little woodland creature enlivened by the forest's most astute intelligence," has largely been considered a heroic figure in the annals of twentieth-century literature for If This Is a Man, his haunting account of Auschwitz. Yet Levi's body of work extends considerably beyond his experience as a survivor. Now, the transformation of Levi from Holocaust memoirist to one of the twentieth century's greatest writers culminates in this publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi. This magisterial collection finally gathers all of Levi's fourteen books-memoirs, essays, poetry, and fiction-into three slip-cased volumes. Thirteen of the books feature new translations, and the other is newly revised by the original translator. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison introduces Levi's writing as a "triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction." The appearance of this historic publication will occasion a major reappraisal of "one of the most valuable writers of our time" (Alfred Kazin).The Complete Works of Primo Levi features all new translations of: The Periodic Table, The Drowned and the Saved, The Truce, Natural Histories, Flaw of Form, The Wrench, Lilith, Other People's Trades, and If Not Now, When?-as well as all of Levi's poems, essays, and other nonfiction work, some of which have never appeared before in English.

Reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army.

An extraordinary kind of autobiography in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and its starting-point from one of the elements in the periodic table.

Twenty-five years of the best of Primo Levi's essays on matters as diverse on The Holocaust and the Austrian Wine-as-anti-freeze scandal.

Primo Levi's devastating and classic account of what it meant to have survived the Holocaust.

Amid Levi's grim tales of the Holocaust, The Wrench is an optimistic life-enhancing novel.

"In 1987, Primo Levi took part in this remarkable series of conversations. He discusses his childhood, his education under Fascism, his friendships, and recounts his wartime experience as a partisan and the terrible price it exacted. This revealing new work will appeal to the many readers of this most eloquent witness to the horrors of Auschwitz"--

In 1945, the day after liberation, Soviet soldiers in control of the Katowice camp in Poland asked Primo Levi and his fellow captive Leonardo De Benedetti to compile a detailed report on the sanitary conditions in Auschwitz.

The Black Hole of Auschwitz brings together Levi's writings on the Holocaust and his experiences of the concentration camp, as well as those on his own accidental status as a writer and his chosen profession of chemist.

Over the course of more than twenty--five years, Primo Levi gave more than two hundred newspaper, journal, radio and television interviews speaking with such varied authors as Philip Roth and Germaine Greer. Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon have selected and translated thirty--six of the most important of these interviews for The Voice of Memory.

Among the first written accounts of the concentration campsa major literary and historical discovery.While in a Russian-administered holding camp in Katowice, Poland, in 1945, Primo Levi was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz. Published the following year, it was subsequently forgotten and remained unknown to a wider public.Dating from the weeks and months immediately after the war, Auschwitz Report details the authors' harrowing deportation to Auschwitz, and how those who disembarked from the train were selected for work or extermination. As well as being a searing narrative of everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers, it constitutes Levi's first lucid attempts to come to terms with the raw horror of events that would drive him to create some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature and testimony. Auschwitz Report is a major literary and historical discovery.

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century. This landmark selection of his short stories opens up a world of wonder, love, cruelty and curious twists of fate, where nothing is as it seems. In The Fugitive an office worker composes the most beautiful poem ever with unforeseen consequences, while Magic Paint sees a group of researchers develop a paint that mysteriously protects them from misfortune. Gladiators and The Knall are chilling explorations of mass violence, and in The Tranquil Star a simple story of stargazing becomes a meditation on language, imagination and infinity.

A Tranquil Star, the first new American collection of Primo Levi previously untranslated fiction to appear since 1990, affirms his position as one of the twentieth century's most enduring writers.

Compiled in three beautifully slip-cased hardback editions, with an introduction by Toni Morrison, this book focuses on the understanding of the human condition and philosophical exploration of the polarities of good and evil.

Primo Levi's account of life as a concentration camp prisoner falls into two parts. Probing the themes which preoccupy all his writing - work love, power, the nature of things, what it is to be human - he leaves the reader drained, elated, apprehensive.

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century: a man who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with an unaffected tenderness. Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. This book features stories that are an elegy to those who stood out against the background of Auschwitz.