And in fact, as the dream proceeds, slowly or brutally, each time in a different way, everything collapses and disintegrates around me, the scenery, the walls, the people, while the anguish becomes more intense and more precise. Now everything has changed to chaos; I am alone in the centre of a grey and turbid nothing and know, I know what this thing means, and I also know that I have always known it; I am in Lager once more, and nothing is true outside the Lager.

To even consider giving this some kind of star rating just feels a bit weird to me. If you want an in depth look at what day to day life was like in a Nazi labour camp, then this is ideal. I've studied WWII numerous times, yet nothing has ever provided such a detailed account as this.

It is horrific what was endured and it baffles me that any human survived. I read the first half for my university course and plan on finishing the second half later this year when I have completed my degree. No one ever talks about what happened to those poor people once the camps fell, illustrating why the second half of this book seems as though it will be just as important as the first.

A difficult read, but a necessary one, especially in light of the recent coup at the White House where one abhorrent man wore a 'camp auschwitz' hoodie - absolutely terrifying.

I read this for a number of reasons: because I thought The Periodic Table was superb, because I wanted to read about Levi's experiences in writing of that quality, because I wanted to see whether I could apply any of the wisdom Levi gleaned from his experiences to my own existence, because I wanted to see whether Levi did something similar, and because I wanted to read Levi's thoughts about the wider context of his and other people's treatment.

Some of those reasons were based on the ill-thought-out expectation that liberation from the camps and return home would have been swift and restorative, and that The Truce would have been written in velvet-cushioned comfort, satiety and isolation. Based on idiocy, basically.

So wide-ranging musing is largely absent, but If This Is a Man and The Truce are both unshowily excellent throughout, and at times unshowily shatteringly awful and at others unshowily joyously redemptive in recounting acts of enormous horror and small-scale humanity, respectively. I turned down the corners of a lot of pages, but here are a couple of illustrations (which are exceptions to what I said at the start of this paragraph):

"Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable."

"When it rains we would like to cry. It is November, it has been raining for ten days now [...] If I could walk ten steps to the left I would be under shelter [...] It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. Or else, it is raining and it is also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup [...] Or it is raining, windy, and you have the usual hunger, and then you think that if you really had to, if you really felt nothing in your heart but suffering and tedium [...] well, even in that case, you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains, and then it would stop raining."

Este libro fue bastante distinto a lo que estoy acostumbrada a leer sobre el Holocausto.

No tiene esa tonalidad vengativa hacia los alemanes, o los demonizan como entes sin piedad que solo existen para maltratar a los judíos. Ambos libros (porque sí, es una dulogía) son todo un viaje de leer. Exhaustivo, desesperante, desastroso... y el hecho de que no narrara con odio o resentimiento hacia nadie es sorprendente y a la vez denota el gran corazón que tenía Primo... o el vacío que le dejó Buna.

Definitivamente algo que no debe repetirse nunca, y que debe ser recordado para que no vuelva a pasar.

As well as being the most important book I've read so far, it was the most eloquent linear narrative I've read. Recount and reflect. That is the formula Levi does so well in his slightly removed, yet not cold retelling of his...struggle. There needs to be a better word to give to the survivors of this besmirched era of history. The tales within stories within what feels like a life within or outside his own life are all true, are all given heartfelt brevity, and force you to begin to understand (as much as spectators can) the truth. He leaves us on a reflective note, not a vengeful or hopeless one. It's poetry. Each man's story is an odyssey.

Es ist das nicht Pathetische, das einfach genau Beobachtete, das die Beschreibung so eingängig macht. Es ist das Absurde der Situationen, das einen Schaudern lässt. Dabei ist vom Tod kaum die Rede, nur davon, wie ein Mensch versucht, unter unmenschlichen Bedingungen, zu überleben. Immer auf dem Grat wandernd, so zu werden, wie ihn die Nazis mit seiner Einweisung nach Auschwitz haben wollten, und eben doch nicht so zu sein.

Una lettura sofferta, che mi ha richiesto mesi per meditare su ogni parola che leggevo, per lasciarla sedimentare. Sorprende la lucidità e l'assenza di condanna da parte dell'autore, che vuole dare testimonianza ma evitare atteggiamenti parziali per l'una o l'altra parte. E' una discesa all'inferno, seguita da una lenta risalita alla normalità. Imprescindibile

Not nearly as well written or as interesting as Elie Wiesel's Night.

I have no idea how someone can write like this about an experience like this. Primo Levi has the sharp inquiry of a journalist, the melancholy wisdom of an old philosopher and somehow through it all a wonderful wit and dry, pitch-black humor. One of the most ferocious, incredible books I’ve ever read.

"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions"

Probably the best work about the Holocaust I have ever read. Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian, was captured while involved with a Resistance movement in 1944, and sent to Auschwitz. He was assigned to the work camp at Monowitz, and in If This is a Man he documents the brutality of the camp and the gradual dehumanisation of its occupants through cold, hunger, fatigue and its inhumane regime. In its companion volume, The Truce, Levi takes the reader with him on the bizarre and confused return journey to Italy.

Levi deliberately writes in a measured unsentimental way. He states his aim in the invaluable appendix to this edition “the calm sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge” This is far more effective in conveying the atmosphere of the camp than the sentimental and emotional tone so often used in modern Holocaust fiction, and provides a chilling and haunting account of this unimaginable cruelty and deprivation.

If This is a Man is an important and eye opening account, but difficult to read, particularly the final 10 days of the camp as detailed in the final chapter. The Nazis have fled, taking healthy occupants on a final death march, while Levi and his few healthy companions are scrabbling for survival in these hellish conditions amidst sick and dying people, filth and extreme cold. The Truce is a more uplifting work, full of mischievous humour. Despite the chaos of the journey from Poland to Italy, via Russia, the bunch of lively characters find ways to eat, drink and even occasionally be merry (there is a very funny account of a theatrical production in a Russian camp).

Definitely worth reading, and heeding the warning of someone who knew exactly what charismatic leaders followed by an adoring and unthinking populace can easily lead to.

The Truce explains in detail how just walking out of Buna / Monowitz means little. Almost equally bad is yet to come and "home" seems so distant and impossible to reach.

If This Is a Man is an account of Levi's 20 months in the camp.

It's hard to rate a book about the darkest times of humankind.

I can't help, however, how I felt throughout most of the book. I feel like Art Spiegelman's Maus and Elie Wiesel's The Night were better works of literature on the topic of horrors of the German concentration camps.

When we talk about orders of magnitude, the intelligence of humans vs ants for example, this is the only way to describe Primo Levi in comparison with most writers. So much so that to say this book is the 'best' I've read in years feels so clumsy and crude an adjective as to constitute an insult. Levi conveys the absurdity amongst the horror and insanity of the nightmare in a way few others have ever done. I would give it 6 stars if I could, it's in a league (almost) of its own.