A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Writer Primo Levi (1919-1987), an Italian Jew, did not come to the wide attention of the English-reading audience until the last years of his life. A survivor of the Holocaust and imprisonment in Auschwitz, Levi is considered to be one of the century's most compelling voices, and The Periodic Table is his most famous book. Taking the knowledge he gained from his training as a chemist, Levi uses the elements as metaphors to create a cycle of linked, somewhat autobiographical tales, including stories of the Piedmontese Jewish community he came from, and of his response to the Holocaust.

A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007, 31 Jul 2008
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated, 21 Jun 2008
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.

For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.

Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.

A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers', 17 Jun 2008
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.

One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.

Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.


wrong book, 22 Dec 2007
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Recommended for academic fairies., 26 Oct 2007
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.

A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007, 31 Jul 2008
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated, 21 Jun 2008
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.

For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.

Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.

A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers', 17 Jun 2008
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.

One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.

Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.


wrong book, 22 Dec 2007
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Recommended for academic fairies., 26 Oct 2007
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.





Buy 'If This Is A Man' Instead, 07 Jul 2008
A great work, but 'Survival in Auschwitz' is just the American name for 'If This Is A Man', which is published in Britain together with 'The Truce' in a single volume. Amazon has it, and it's better value as well as a better title.

One of the best Holocaust memoirs, 18 Sep 2007
There has been much great literature written by holocaust survivors, and this one is just about as good as any.

Primo Levi describes in "Survival in Auschwitz" the scheme by which those who could were able to maintain some sort of existance. Those unable to work are gassed, shot or beaten to death. Those who manage to survive are those who find ways to make themselves useful, without actual serioius exertion on the meagre rations. The lifeblood of the camp is "organising" - a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a slice of bread; a potato for a scarf.

One difference between Levi and other Holocaust memoirs, is that he does not rely on an emotional appeal. He produces a trully excellent and insightful disposition of the the psychology of genocide. The emotional effects stems from Levis astute analysis, rather than being explicity given, an as such and as such are probably actually more effective.

It is a strange aspect of holocaust literatre, that in describing such terrible events they can engender such positive feelings in the reader. The way that those such as Levi can survive the horrors and somehow come out the other end as full human beings is inspiring to us all.








a hard read, 13 Sep 2006
this book was a below average read,iv read much better books than this onthe concentration camps.i found this book very hard to stay interested in and found alot of times my mind would wander off and get bored of this book so i didnt bother finishing it.so i wouldnt recommend this book

Recommended read, 22 Feb 2005
Following the Auschwitz anniversary, I decided to read a lot more about the holocaust than I knew. Survival in Auschwitz by primo Levi was one of the books I read and loved. I consider it to be one of the most well-written, touching and compelling memoirs about the holocaust. Promo Levi is an excellent writer, with deep, lucid and compelling prose and insightful writing style. This book is one of the most influential books of my life.

After reading this book, I can't imagine any person not honestly feeling for humanity, and becoming compassionate no matter what the circumstance is. This well-depicted book is a recommendation for those interested in the plight of mankind in wars and other man-made and natural disasters. Read it and you will rave and pass it on to your friends.

This is a well recommended Holocaust book along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,PERIODIC TABLE, NIGHT

horrific, huge, scary, what we can do to one another, 09 Mar 1999
please read this book. I have long studied WWII, no other work as so affected me to the extent of this book. Levi explains the ultimate horror. Imagine being stripped of everying, honor, clothing, self esteem. Self and worthiness. It is maddening. Levi produces a realistic, traumatic and horrifying portrait of what people went through not more than 54 years ago. Lest we repeat this lesson, it is important to listen to those like Levi. We all are capable of the ativistic characteristics of those we wish to distance ourselves from.

A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007, 31 Jul 2008
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated, 21 Jun 2008
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.

For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.

Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.

A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers', 17 Jun 2008
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.

One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.

Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.


wrong book, 22 Dec 2007
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Recommended for academic fairies., 26 Oct 2007
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.





Buy 'If This Is A Man' Instead, 07 Jul 2008
A great work, but 'Survival in Auschwitz' is just the American name for 'If This Is A Man', which is published in Britain together with 'The Truce' in a single volume. Amazon has it, and it's better value as well as a better title.

One of the best Holocaust memoirs, 18 Sep 2007
There has been much great literature written by holocaust survivors, and this one is just about as good as any.

Primo Levi describes in "Survival in Auschwitz" the scheme by which those who could were able to maintain some sort of existance. Those unable to work are gassed, shot or beaten to death. Those who manage to survive are those who find ways to make themselves useful, without actual serioius exertion on the meagre rations. The lifeblood of the camp is "organising" - a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a slice of bread; a potato for a scarf.

One difference between Levi and other Holocaust memoirs, is that he does not rely on an emotional appeal. He produces a trully excellent and insightful disposition of the the psychology of genocide. The emotional effects stems from Levis astute analysis, rather than being explicity given, an as such and as such are probably actually more effective.

It is a strange aspect of holocaust literatre, that in describing such terrible events they can engender such positive feelings in the reader. The way that those such as Levi can survive the horrors and somehow come out the other end as full human beings is inspiring to us all.








a hard read, 13 Sep 2006
this book was a below average read,iv read much better books than this onthe concentration camps.i found this book very hard to stay interested in and found alot of times my mind would wander off and get bored of this book so i didnt bother finishing it.so i wouldnt recommend this book

Recommended read, 22 Feb 2005
Following the Auschwitz anniversary, I decided to read a lot more about the holocaust than I knew. Survival in Auschwitz by primo Levi was one of the books I read and loved. I consider it to be one of the most well-written, touching and compelling memoirs about the holocaust. Promo Levi is an excellent writer, with deep, lucid and compelling prose and insightful writing style. This book is one of the most influential books of my life.

After reading this book, I can't imagine any person not honestly feeling for humanity, and becoming compassionate no matter what the circumstance is. This well-depicted book is a recommendation for those interested in the plight of mankind in wars and other man-made and natural disasters. Read it and you will rave and pass it on to your friends.

This is a well recommended Holocaust book along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,PERIODIC TABLE, NIGHT

horrific, huge, scary, what we can do to one another, 09 Mar 1999
please read this book. I have long studied WWII, no other work as so affected me to the extent of this book. Levi explains the ultimate horror. Imagine being stripped of everying, honor, clothing, self esteem. Self and worthiness. It is maddening. Levi produces a realistic, traumatic and horrifying portrait of what people went through not more than 54 years ago. Lest we repeat this lesson, it is important to listen to those like Levi. We all are capable of the ativistic characteristics of those we wish to distance ourselves from.

Death camp survivor, 03 Aug 2007
The author, Primo Levi, tries to understand the rationale behind Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. Dismissing stereotyped images of brutal Nazi torturers and helpless victims, Levi draws extensively on his own experiences and substantial intelect to delve into the minds and motives of oppressors and oppressed alike. Describing the difficulty and shame of remembering, the limited forms of collaboration between inmates and SS goalers, the exploitation of "useless violence" and the plight of the intellectual, Levi writes about the issue of power, mercy and guilt, and their effects on the lives of the ordinary people who suffered so incomprehendingly. A sad tale of an attempt to rationalise mans behaviour in the most extreme of circumstances.

I found this to be an interesting read but I thought in certain areas the author could have made his point in a more succinct manner...i.e. he rambled on a bit! Levi does put a lot of pertinent points across to the reader though that are well evidenced with survivor testomonies and direct personal experiences. It's obviously a sad read due to the content but made more tragic knowing that Levi killed himself shortly after the completion of the book.

A survivor of hell, writing with compassion and wisdom, 24 Sep 2004
I read this book during the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 as I wondered what would happen to the Lebanese I was meeting who had collaborated with the Israeli occupiers. Who exactly was guilty? And how guilty were they?

Levi writes about guilt in the horrific circumstances of the Nazi concentration camp, mulling over those who co-operated with the Nazis (working, eg, as cleaners)if only to extend their lives by a short period. He writes with an astonishing humanity and humility, and with a strange detachment that makes his observations more telling.

Having survived such a hell, he felt the guilt of the 'saved' that he had seen so many 'drown' and he wrote as a man of compassion and wisdom. Levi will make you cry and take you to the depths, but somehow make you feel stronger.

Surely one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

How does one survive in a world built to murder you?, 24 Aug 2004
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. How many of those that did, I wondered, knew about what he did to European Jewry? Those who do know of the holocaust usually know of little other than Auschwitz but even then only think of it as a railway station with a path to the side that leads to a gas chamber, not as an actual camp where thousands struggled to live what life they were temporarily allowed in order to serve their murderes via forced labour.

Prison stories are always chilling but most think of prison as a place of holding until release, not death. What place does morality, conscience, hygiene and dignity have in a death camp?

Levi's description of camp life is not as brutal and disturbing as perhaps those related in Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust', the book seems less about the atrocities afflicted on the inmates but on how they survived them and further still retained the spirit and will to continue.

I have not the knowledge or right to really comment on his work or indeed on the work of any survivor. It is not my place even to judge those that commited the crimes. What is important is that I (and others of my age) know of them. For to be ignorant of it is not only a betrayal of those destroyed by it, but a further crime against those who survived it.

How does one survive in a world built to murder you?, 23 Aug 2004
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. How many of those that did, I wondered, knew about what he did to European Jewry? Those who do know of the holocaust usually know of little other than Auschwitz but even then only think of it as a railway station with a path to the side that leads to a gas chamber, not as an actual camp where thousands struggled to live what life they were temporarily allowed in order to serve their murderes via forced labour.

Prison stories are always chilling but most think of prison as a place of holding until release, not death. What place does morality, conscience, hygiene and dignity have in a death camp?

Levi's description of camp life in 'Is this a Man'is not as brutal and disturbing as perhaps those related in Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust', the book seems less about the atrocities afflicted on the inmates but on how they survived them and further still retained the spirit and will to continue. In 'The Drowned and the Saved' Levi attempts to understand the German people of the Nazi era. How they endorsed or allowed themselves to be seduced by the Nazi ideology... by greed, vanity and hatred... to turn their backs on morality, truth and basic human goodness. Germany will always be remembered or rather tarnished because of the Nazis, it will always remain as much a part of their history as the Congo atrocities belonged to Leopold's Belgium, Australia's belong with the British and the on-going crimes visited on the Native Americans...

I have not the knowledge or right to really comment on his work or indeed on the work of any survivor. It is not my place even to judge those that commited the crimes. What is important is that I (and others of my age) know of them. For to be ignorant of it is not only a betrayal of those destroyed by it, but a further crime against those who survived it.

An analytical look at the Holocaust from a Witness, 23 Jan 2002
Levi once again manages to concisely delve into the topic of the Holocaust. Here he refers to his experiences to confront the deeper issues of life in the Lager and the after effects it had on the survivors, the Saved. It can best be surmised as a collection of essays that address various topics, (including, but not exclusively): the fallacies of memories, prisoners who cooperated with the Nazis, the importance of communication and language in the Lager, the guilt felt by survivors and the response from his German readers. If you have read Levi's autobiographical works, then this is a necessary accompaniment. The only negative thing I have to say about this edition is the review on the back jacket which so firmly states that Levi's death was a suicide, and makes conjectures as to why he did so. His death is a mystery and will always remain as such.(Good content, bad cover!)

A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007, 31 Jul 2008
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated, 21 Jun 2008
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.

For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.

Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.

A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers', 17 Jun 2008
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.

One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.

Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.


wrong book, 22 Dec 2007
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Recommended for academic fairies., 26 Oct 2007
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.





Buy 'If This Is A Man' Instead, 07 Jul 2008
A great work, but 'Survival in Auschwitz' is just the American name for 'If This Is A Man', which is published in Britain together with 'The Truce' in a single volume. Amazon has it, and it's better value as well as a better title.

One of the best Holocaust memoirs, 18 Sep 2007
There has been much great literature written by holocaust survivors, and this one is just about as good as any.

Primo Levi describes in "Survival in Auschwitz" the scheme by which those who could were able to maintain some sort of existance. Those unable to work are gassed, shot or beaten to death. Those who manage to survive are those who find ways to make themselves useful, without actual serioius exertion on the meagre rations. The lifeblood of the camp is "organising" - a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a slice of bread; a potato for a scarf.

One difference between Levi and other Holocaust memoirs, is that he does not rely on an emotional appeal. He produces a trully excellent and insightful disposition of the the psychology of genocide. The emotional effects stems from Levis astute analysis, rather than being explicity given, an as such and as such are probably actually more effective.

It is a strange aspect of holocaust literatre, that in describing such terrible events they can engender such positive feelings in the reader. The way that those such as Levi can survive the horrors and somehow come out the other end as full human beings is inspiring to us all.








a hard read, 13 Sep 2006
this book was a below average read,iv read much better books than this onthe concentration camps.i found this book very hard to stay interested in and found alot of times my mind would wander off and get bored of this book so i didnt bother finishing it.so i wouldnt recommend this book

Recommended read, 22 Feb 2005
Following the Auschwitz anniversary, I decided to read a lot more about the holocaust than I knew. Survival in Auschwitz by primo Levi was one of the books I read and loved. I consider it to be one of the most well-written, touching and compelling memoirs about the holocaust. Promo Levi is an excellent writer, with deep, lucid and compelling prose and insightful writing style. This book is one of the most influential books of my life.

After reading this book, I can't imagine any person not honestly feeling for humanity, and becoming compassionate no matter what the circumstance is. This well-depicted book is a recommendation for those interested in the plight of mankind in wars and other man-made and natural disasters. Read it and you will rave and pass it on to your friends.

This is a well recommended Holocaust book along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,PERIODIC TABLE, NIGHT

horrific, huge, scary, what we can do to one another, 09 Mar 1999
please read this book. I have long studied WWII, no other work as so affected me to the extent of this book. Levi explains the ultimate horror. Imagine being stripped of everying, honor, clothing, self esteem. Self and worthiness. It is maddening. Levi produces a realistic, traumatic and horrifying portrait of what people went through not more than 54 years ago. Lest we repeat this lesson, it is important to listen to those like Levi. We all are capable of the ativistic characteristics of those we wish to distance ourselves from.

Death camp survivor, 03 Aug 2007
The author, Primo Levi, tries to understand the rationale behind Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. Dismissing stereotyped images of brutal Nazi torturers and helpless victims, Levi draws extensively on his own experiences and substantial intelect to delve into the minds and motives of oppressors and oppressed alike. Describing the difficulty and shame of remembering, the limited forms of collaboration between inmates and SS goalers, the exploitation of "useless violence" and the plight of the intellectual, Levi writes about the issue of power, mercy and guilt, and their effects on the lives of the ordinary people who suffered so incomprehendingly. A sad tale of an attempt to rationalise mans behaviour in the most extreme of circumstances.

I found this to be an interesting read but I thought in certain areas the author could have made his point in a more succinct manner...i.e. he rambled on a bit! Levi does put a lot of pertinent points across to the reader though that are well evidenced with survivor testomonies and direct personal experiences. It's obviously a sad read due to the content but made more tragic knowing that Levi killed himself shortly after the completion of the book.

A survivor of hell, writing with compassion and wisdom, 24 Sep 2004
I read this book during the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 as I wondered what would happen to the Lebanese I was meeting who had collaborated with the Israeli occupiers. Who exactly was guilty? And how guilty were they?

Levi writes about guilt in the horrific circumstances of the Nazi concentration camp, mulling over those who co-operated with the Nazis (working, eg, as cleaners)if only to extend their lives by a short period. He writes with an astonishing humanity and humility, and with a strange detachment that makes his observations more telling.

Having survived such a hell, he felt the guilt of the 'saved' that he had seen so many 'drown' and he wrote as a man of compassion and wisdom. Levi will make you cry and take you to the depths, but somehow make you feel stronger.

Surely one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

How does one survive in a world built to murder you?, 24 Aug 2004
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. How many of those that did, I wondered, knew about what he did to European Jewry? Those who do know of the holocaust usually know of little other than Auschwitz but even then only think of it as a railway station with a path to the side that leads to a gas chamber, not as an actual camp where thousands struggled to live what life they were temporarily allowed in order to serve their murderes via forced labour.

Prison stories are always chilling but most think of prison as a place of holding until release, not death. What place does morality, conscience, hygiene and dignity have in a death camp?

Levi's description of camp life is not as brutal and disturbing as perhaps those related in Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust', the book seems less about the atrocities afflicted on the inmates but on how they survived them and further still retained the spirit and will to continue.

I have not the knowledge or right to really comment on his work or indeed on the work of any survivor. It is not my place even to judge those that commited the crimes. What is important is that I (and others of my age) know of them. For to be ignorant of it is not only a betrayal of those destroyed by it, but a further crime against those who survived it.

How does one survive in a world built to murder you?, 23 Aug 2004
I heard recently a statistic that claimed that more than 12% of the population of the UK (of adult age)had never even heard of Adolf Hitler. How many of those that did, I wondered, knew about what he did to European Jewry? Those who do know of the holocaust usually know of little other than Auschwitz but even then only think of it as a railway station with a path to the side that leads to a gas chamber, not as an actual camp where thousands struggled to live what life they were temporarily allowed in order to serve their murderes via forced labour.

Prison stories are always chilling but most think of prison as a place of holding until release, not death. What place does morality, conscience, hygiene and dignity have in a death camp?

Levi's description of camp life in 'Is this a Man'is not as brutal and disturbing as perhaps those related in Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust', the book seems less about the atrocities afflicted on the inmates but on how they survived them and further still retained the spirit and will to continue. In 'The Drowned and the Saved' Levi attempts to understand the German people of the Nazi era. How they endorsed or allowed themselves to be seduced by the Nazi ideology... by greed, vanity and hatred... to turn their backs on morality, truth and basic human goodness. Germany will always be remembered or rather tarnished because of the Nazis, it will always remain as much a part of their history as the Congo atrocities belonged to Leopold's Belgium, Australia's belong with the British and the on-going crimes visited on the Native Americans...

I have not the knowledge or right to really comment on his work or indeed on the work of any survivor. It is not my place even to judge those that commited the crimes. What is important is that I (and others of my age) know of them. For to be ignorant of it is not only a betrayal of those destroyed by it, but a further crime against those who survived it.

An analytical look at the Holocaust from a Witness, 23 Jan 2002
Levi once again manages to concisely delve into the topic of the Holocaust. Here he refers to his experiences to confront the deeper issues of life in the Lager and the after effects it had on the survivors, the Saved. It can best be surmised as a collection of essays that address various topics, (including, but not exclusively): the fallacies of memories, prisoners who cooperated with the Nazis, the importance of communication and language in the Lager, the guilt felt by survivors and the response from his German readers. If you have read Levi's autobiographical works, then this is a necessary accompaniment. The only negative thing I have to say about this edition is the review on the back jacket which so firmly states that Levi's death was a suicide, and makes conjectures as to why he did so. His death is a mystery and will always remain as such.(Good content, bad cover!)

Buy 'If This Is A Man' Instead, 07 Jul 2008
A great work, but 'Survival in Auschwitz' is just the American name for 'If This Is A Man', which is published in Britain together with 'The Truce' in a single volume. Amazon has it, and it's better value as well as a better title.

One of the best Holocaust memoirs, 18 Sep 2007
There has been much great literature written by holocaust survivors, and this one is just about as good as any.

Primo Levi describes in "Survival in Auschwitz" the scheme by which those who could were able to maintain some sort of existance. Those unable to work are gassed, shot or beaten to death. Those who manage to survive are those who find ways to make themselves useful, without actual serioius exertion on the meagre rations. The lifeblood of the camp is "organising" - a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a slice of bread; a potato for a scarf.

One difference between Levi and other Holocaust memoirs, is that he does not rely on an emotional appeal. He produces a trully excellent and insightful disposition of the the psychology of genocide. The emotional effects stems from Levis astute analysis, rather than being explicity given, an as such and as such are probably actually more effective.

It is a strange aspect of holocaust literatre, that in describing such terrible events they can engender such positive feelings in the reader. The way that those such as Levi can survive the horrors and somehow come out the other end as full human beings is inspiring to us all.








a hard read, 13 Sep 2006
this book was a below average read,iv read much better books than this onthe concentration camps.i found this book very hard to stay interested in and found alot of times my mind would wander off and get bored of this book so i didnt bother finishing it.so i wouldnt recommend this book

Recommended read, 22 Feb 2005
Following the Auschwitz anniversary, I decided to read a lot more about the holocaust than I knew. Survival in Auschwitz by primo Levi was one of the books I read and loved. I consider it to be one of the most well-written, touching and compelling memoirs about the holocaust. Promo Levi is an excellent writer, with deep, lucid and compelling prose and insightful writing style. This book is one of the most influential books of my life.

After reading this book, I can't imagine any person not honestly feeling for humanity, and becoming compassionate no matter what the circumstance is. This well-depicted book is a recommendation for those interested in the plight of mankind in wars and other man-made and natural disasters. Read it and you will rave and pass it on to your friends.

This is a well recommended Holocaust book along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,PERIODIC TABLE, NIGHT

horrific, huge, scary, what we can do to one another, 09 Mar 1999
please read this book. I have long studied WWII, no other work as so affected me to the extent of this book. Levi explains the ultimate horror. Imagine being stripped of everying, honor, clothing, self esteem. Self and worthiness. It is maddening. Levi produces a realistic, traumatic and horrifying portrait of what people went through not more than 54 years ago. Lest we repeat this lesson, it is important to listen to those like Levi. We all are capable of the ativistic characteristics of those we wish to distance ourselves from.

A Witness to Barbarism, 21 Oct 2008
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.

Indispensible - a necessary read, 27 Jun 2008
If you want to understand the holocaust, how and why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses and describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity and thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. This in turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of life in the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily and through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi and his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.

A truly necessary book, 21 Apr 2008
Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", and the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, and to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps and the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundane in its completeness.

In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of ways in which he illustrates what it's like to live in a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation and destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemists in the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that - in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germans in the factory - it never actually produced anything).

He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, and reaches across the page to remind us of the perils and joys of the human condition.

Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending, 29 Jan 2008
Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, and compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breath in one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt out in all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence and death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, and running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, and leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front and one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to study in depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking part in some social and psychological experiment of the most monstrous and preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events and people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege and a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, and stupidly enlightening, in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am I in any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience, in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing and a terrible witness.

A must read, 27 Dec 2006
Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessed in a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Read in conjunction with Auschwitz report.

Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007, 31 Jul 2008
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated, 21 Jun 2008
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.

For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.

Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.

A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers', 17 Jun 2008
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.

One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.

Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.


wrong book, 22 Dec 2007
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Recommended for academic fairies., 26 Oct 2007
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.





Buy 'If This Is A Man' Instead, 07 Jul 2008
A great work, but 'Survival in Auschwitz' is just the American name for 'If This Is A Man', which is published in Britain together with 'The Truce' in a single volume. Amazon has it, and it's better value as well as a better title.

One of the best Holocaust memoirs, 18 Sep 2007
There has been much great literature written by holocaust survivors, and this one is just about as good as any.

Primo Levi describes in "Survival in Auschwitz" the scheme by which those who could were able to maintain some sort of existance. Those unable to work are gassed, shot or beaten to death. Those who manage to survive are those who find ways to make themselves useful, without actual serioius exertion on the meagre rations. The lifeblood of the camp is "organising" - a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a slice of bread; a potato for a scarf.

One difference between Levi and other Holocaust memoirs, is that he does not rely on an emotional appeal. He produces a trully excellent and insightful disposition of the the psychology of genocide. The emotional effects stems from Levis astute analysis, rather than being explicity given, an as such and as such are probably actually more effective.

It is a strange aspect of holocaust literatre, that in describing such terrible events they can engender such positive feelings in the reader. The way that those such as Levi can survive the horrors and somehow come out the other end as full human beings is inspiring to us all.








a hard read, 13 Sep 2006
this book was a below average read,iv read much better books than this onthe concentration camps.i found this book very hard to stay interested in and found alot of times my mind would wander off and get bored of this book so i did