We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.
If This Is A Man/The Truce (50th Anniversary Edition): Surviving Auschwitz
On sale
9th February 2023
Price: £12.99
A new edition of Primo Levi’s classic memoir of the Holocaust, with an introduction by David Baddiel, author of Jews Don’t Count
‘With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, 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… One of the greatest human testaments of the era’ Philip Roth
‘Levi’s voice is especially affecting, so clear, firm and gentle, yet humane and apparently untouched by anger, bitterness or self-pity… If This Is a Man is miraculous, finding the human in every individual who traverses its pages’ Philippe Sands
‘The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers… One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice’ Guardian
‘[What] gave it such power… was the sheer, unmitigated truth of it; the sense of what a book could achieve in terms of expanding one’s own knowledge and understanding at a single sitting… few writers have left such a legacy… A necessary book’ Independent
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
There are other Holocaust testimonies, but Levi's is the first, and the most focused... Written before the genre existed, it reads more straightforwardly like a record... It is a meticulously presented diary of hell
Levi's voice is especially affecting, so clear, firm and gentle, yet humane and apparently untouched by anger, bitterness or self-pity. If This Is a Man is miraculous, finding the human in every individual who traverses its pages, whether a Häftling (prisoner) or Muselmann ("the weak, the inept, those doomed to selection"), a kapo or a guard.
A powerful reminder of what it means to be human
Among the best literature of the twentieth century
With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, 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... One of the greatest human testaments of the era
[What] gave it such power... was the sheer, unmitigated truth of it; the sense of what a book could achieve in terms of expanding one's own knowledge and understanding at a single sitting... few writers have left such a legacy... A necessary book
A life-changing book
The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers . . . One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice