Loved it.
Such a refined pen.
Ranges from a world of humanity in inhumane concentration camps to the sadly ridiculous racist under- or overtones to a world where plants's pollen impregnates girls resulting in a progeny of tree-humans to his lovely village stories. Ever so present to his surroundings and inner being Levi's writings keep providing me with little big treasures making me want for more..

A very good read. Very absorbing. Very simplistic and down to earth writing. My first by the author. Looking forward to reading more ofhis works.

Primo Levi 'brings to life the friends, companions, and even adversaries who shared his experience of the Holocaust'. They are no longer faceless, but real human people. Primo Levi wanted to provide witness to those who didn't make it, telling their stories, so that we the readers could also witness. The stories are not all tragic, but 'bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve'.

Quatre étoiles mais seulement grâce à la première moitié des nouvelles -celles des camps de concentration. La seconde moitié est incompréhensible, la fiction de Primo n’est pas ce que j’appelle une réussite...

Talent narratif certain, on dévore ses histoires, toujours sur une note joyeuse dans un fond de pessimisme.

C’est beau.

A short, brilliantly visualised piece of writing that erupts in the mind with an almost cinematic quality. A meditative account that seeks to rationalise the quality of a God not unlike us, who must be flawed, it seems, if he allowed the horrors of visceral pain to exist and be inflicted upon during the barbarity of the Shoah.

While the tale of Shekinah and Lilith is interesting as an account that delineates certain aspects of Jewish, especially cabalistic theology, it is perhaps most shocking when one realises that Levi's account of life in the Nazi camps is in fact, the absolute truth told without embellishment.

Short episodes from his memories of his time in the lager, written late in life. Some more powerful than others, though as a whole, not his most moving work.

Quotes:

It is possible that the distance in time has accentuated the tendency to round out the facts of heighten the colors: this tendency, or temptation, is an integral part of writing, without it one does not write stories but rather accounts. (11)

He had been short and fat; he was still short, and the flaccid folds on his face and body testified sadly to his former corpulence. (17)

Like all the others, I tried more or less consciously to avoid him: his degree of need was too evident, and in someone in need one always sees a creditor. (18)

Eddy (probably a stage name) was a green triangle but no murderer. He had two professions: he was a juggler and, in his spare time, a thief. (28)

A slap inflicted in the Camp had a very different significance from what it might have here among us in today’s here and now. Precisely: it had a meaning; it was simply another way of expressing oneself. In that context it meant roughly “What out, you’ve really made a big mistake this time, you’re endangering your life, maybe without realizing it, and you’re endangering mine as well.” But between Eddy, a German thief and juggler, and me, a young, inexperienced Italian, fluttered and confused, such a speech would have been useless, not understood (if nothing else, because of language problems), out of tune, and much too roundabout. (31)

Maybe just because I was crazy. But then Italians are all notoriously crazy, good only for singing and getting in trouble. (33)

In those days it was common practice for an engineer to register as a mechanic, or a journalist to put himself down as a typographer. Thus one could hope to get better work than that of a common laborer without unleashing the Nazi wrath against intellectuals. (38)

I soon realized that Bandi had a unique talent for happiness. Oppression, humiliation hard work, exile - all seemed to slide off him like water off a rock, without corrupting or wounding him, indeed purifying and enhancing in him his inborn capacity for joy, as we are told happened to the simple, cheerful, and pious Chassidim described by Jiri Langer in his novel The Nine Doors. (51)

I tried to convince him of a few recent discoveries of mine (in truth, not yet well digested): that down there, in order to get by, it was necessary to get busy, organize illegal food, dodge work, find influential friends, hide one’s thoughts, steal, and lie; that whoever did not do so was soon dead, and that his saintliness seemed dangerous to me and out of place. (52)

Where he could have found a violin was a mystery, but the veterans knew that in a Camp anything can happen. Perhaps he had stolen it; perhaps rented it in exchange for bread. (62)

Who had ever officially received a package? Or even only a letter? Besides, who knew our address, if “KZ Auschwitz” could be considered an address? And to whom could we write, since all our relatives were like us imprisoned in some Camp, or dead, or in hiding here and there in every corner of Europe, in terror of suffering the same fate as ours? Obviously it was a trick: the thank-you letters with the Auschwitz postal mark would be shown to the Red Cross delegation, or who knows what other neutral authority, to prove that after all the Jews in Auschwitz were not treated all that badly, seeing as how they received packages from home. A filthy lie. (66)

But solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread. (67)

There was little feeling of camaraderie among us. It was confined to compatriots, and even toward them it was weakened by the minimal life conditions. It was actually ero, indeed negative, with regard to newcomers. In this and many other respects we had greatly retrogressed and become hardened. And in the “new” fellow prisoner we tended to see an alien, an oafish cumbersome barbarian who took up space, time, and bread, who did not know the unspoken but ironclad rules of coexistence and survival, and who, moreover, complained (and for the wrong reasons) in an irritating and ridiculous manner because just a few days back he was still at home, or at least outside the barbed wire. The new arrival has only one virtue; he brings recent news from the world, because he’s read the newspapers and listened to the radio - perhaps even the Allied radio broadcasts. (67)

When Ezra got in front of Otto, he did not hold out his mess tin. Instead, he said: “Mister Barracks CHief, for us today is a day of atonement and I cannot eat my soup. I respectfully ask you to save it for me until tomorrow evening.” … In all his Camp years he had never run into a prisoner who refused food. For a few moments, he was uncertain whether to laugh or slap that unknown beanpole - was he perhaps making fun of him, Otto? (78-79)

At Auschwitz, the various categories of prisoners (political, common criminals, social misfits, hoosexuals, etc.) were allowed to receive gift packages from home, but not the Jews. Anyway, from whom could the Jews have received them? From their families, exterminated or confined in the surviving ghettos? From the very few who had escaped the roundups, hidden in cellars, in attics, terrified and penniless? And who knew our address? For all the world knew, we were dead. (92)

We even looked somewhat alike; for foreign comrades and the Kapo considered it superfluous to distinguish between us. They constantly confused us, and demanded that whether they called “Alberto” or “Primo,” whichever one of us happened to be closest should answer. (112)

To suffer unjustly is better than to act unjustly. (129)

The Nazi nets tighten around the German Jews: only a few farsighted ones try to flee to neutral countries, or seek precarious refuge in a clandestine existence; the larger part, like Joel’s parents, live from day to day, dazed, feeding on absurd illusions and false information, while every day with refined cruelty that progresses inexorably, law after law is passed with the deliberate intent of inflicting humiliation and suffering. (129-130)

It may be imprecise in some details because it is based on two memories (his and mine), and then over long distances human memory is an erratic instrument, especially if it is not reinforced by material mementoes and is instead spiced by a desire (again, his and mine) that the story be a good one. (144)

Actually, the Gestapo had other fears: they feared that the secret of the Birkenau gas chambers would leak into the outside world through the civilian workers. (153)

It was weird soup. In it we found plum pits, salami peels, once even the wing of a sparrow with all its feathers; another time a scrap of Italian newspaper. I became acquainted with the origin of these ingredients later on when I again saw Lorenzo in Italy: he had told his comrades that among the Jews of Auschwitz were two Italians, and every evening he made the round of his dormitory to collect their leftovers. (154)

We are in this world to do good, not to boast about it. (160)

In many of its aspects, power is like drug: the need for the one and for the other is unknown to those who have not experienced them, but after the initiation, which may be accidental, addiction is born, dependency, and the need for ever larger doses. (170)

Cornerstone of my senior literature capstone project on Jewish literature and holocaust erasure. Gut wrenching and beautifully written.

Un recueil de nouvelles, certaines tenant de la vie au camp, d’autres relèvent plus de l’anticipation, d’autres des tranches de vies, des personnages. Difficile d’y trouver une unité, mais la lecture est dans l’ensemble plaisante.

Incipit
Nel giro di pochi minuti il cielo si era fatto nero ed aveva cominciato a piovere.....
Lilít e altri racconti Incipitmania

Beautiful book and recommended read - A collection of short stories about humans.
 
The book is split up into 3 parts - The first part talks about (autobiographical one can assume) experiences from the Holocaust, but focusing on the "positive" interactions with other inmates and guards which highlight how even in the most unimaginable devilish circumstances, humanity can shine. The second part is composed of science fiction'y tales, where the distinction between real and fictional is subtle - and here as well the stories serve as a backdrop to talk about the human experience. The third and last part is less thematic and includes a range of stories, more or less of the same "feeling".

By far that most gripping parts are the ones about the Holocaust. They are the most extreme - the evil of humanity is pure evil, and the acts of kindness done during the fight for survival shine even more as a result. You can see through Primo Levi's writing the love he has for the human race, even compassion he feels for the soldiers committing the atrocities, as well as his ability to find humor in the surrealistic death filled circumstances he endured. I can only imagine that his compassion and inability to feel hatred must have on some level made his experience even worse... but it also enabled him to write amazing Holocaust accounts full of complexity and nuance. 

The slightly tragic thing about this book is that the other two parts, while still beautiful, pale a bit in comparison, lacking slightly the morbid excitement of anything Holocaust related. It kind of feels like he was trying to get away from the Holocaust in his storytelling, to show even to himself that this is just one event in his life that will not define him as a person and an author, but tragically I think this was probably not possible given all the horrors. So while I couldn't take the book down while reading the first part, the second and third parts took me much longer to read, and yet they are still beautiful, funny and insightful.

I kind of deliberated if to give this book 5 or 4 stars, given that fact that some of the short stories in the 2'nd and 3'rd part did seem a bit more trivial and less gripping, yet decided on 5 given the love and good heartedness that shines through, as well as the unique Holocaust depiction.

Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who began his career as a chemist, but was sent to Auschwitz, and after the war, became a highly-regarded Holocaust memoirist. This book reads more like short stories than a fluid narrative, and the concept behind the title is that it's meant to capture the moments of reprieve amidst the darkness of Auschwitz. The thing is, Primo Levi was an atheist, so his idea of a moment of reprieve was a Jew picking the lice off his head and putting it in a Nazi uniform. I applaud the act, but it's not the same as the acts of faith depicted in Orthodox memoirs. Still, there's one line that I think I'll remember for the rest of my life, "All problems have solutions. If something that appears to be a problem doesn't have a solution, it's just a pseudo-problem."