THE COMPLETE WORKS OF PRIMO LEVI

Purchase On:
Norton | IndieBound

The Complete Works of Primo Levi, which includes seminal works like If This Is a Man and The Periodic Table, finally gathers all fourteen of Leviโ€™s booksโ€”memoirs, essays, poetry, commentary, and fictionโ€”into three slipcased volumes.

Primo Levi, the Italian-born chemist once described by Philip Roth as that โ€œquicksilver little woodland creature enlivened by the forestโ€™s most astute intelligence,โ€ 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 Leviโ€™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 centuryโ€™s greatest writers culminates in this publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi. This magisterial collection finally gathers all of Leviโ€™s fourteen booksโ€”memoirs, essays, poetry, and fictionโ€”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 Leviโ€™s writing as a โ€œtriumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction.โ€ The appearance of this historic publication will occasion a major reappraisal of โ€œone of the most valuable writers of our timeโ€ (Alfred Kazin).

The Complete Works of Primo Levi features all new translations of: The Periodic TableThe Drowned and the SavedThe TruceNatural HistoriesFlaw of FormThe WrenchLilithOther Peopleโ€™s Trades, and If Not Now, When?โ€”as well as all of Leviโ€™s poems, essays, and other nonfiction work, some of which have never appeared before in English.


PRAISE

“Jenny McPhee and Nathaniel Rich, both novelists in their own right, offer lively translations of texts that would likely never have been republished were it not for the great memoirs that preceded them and our consequent interest in Levi.โ€
โ€“Tim Parks,ย Theย New York Review of Books


“Levi, a scientist and deep humanist, vividly comes alive in this boxed set. A laudable, monumental effort to gather the work of a crucial writer of the 20th century in one voluminous package.”
โ€“ Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review


NOVELS

TRANSLATIONS