A review by punkasschloe
If This Is a Man • The Truce by Primo Levi

4.0

Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, writes of his time in one of the Auschwitz camps in If This Is a Man, and of his liberation and long journey back to Italy in The Truce. Levi writes with an almost detached voice; it reads as if we are simply observing without emotion the harrows of the Holocaust. Yet he does not need to inflict emotion in his writing, because what he describes was indeed a fact, his life, and is truly horrible (perhaps this choice in writing is also a reflection and honour to his career as a scientist, wherein one typically only states what is observed). It is hard to rate such books, because I think it is a necessity to remind ourselves of the worst of humanity, so we do not repeat such a thing. Would I read these books again? No. Would I recommend them? Absolutely yes.

“This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.”