Primo Levi: A Life

In Primo Levi: A Life, award-winning English author Ian Thomson presents a comprehensive biography of the acclaimed Italian Jewish writer and chemist whose works have become a bedrock of modern European literature. Published in the United States by Picador in 2002, the book draws from Thomson's unparalleled access to Levi's personal archives—including his voluminous amount of correspondence—and the people in Levi's life. The result is a biography of the man and his art, as well as the mythos that has built up around him in the popular imagination: as a writer, a Holocaust survivor, and a wholly original literary personality.

In a preface, Thomson makes clear his intentions were to write a book that defied traditional biography and truly captured Levi's character, with all its talents and charms and flaws. Since much of Levi's literary output was autobiographical in nature, Thomson says he made a concerted effort not to simply reprint his subject's stories, but to find the truth behind Levi's words, the motivations for the events in his life, the people involved, and the effects on Levi the man and Levi the artist. Thomson is also in the unique position of having interviewed his subject. In 1986, the two men met at Levi's home in Italy, where, according to Thomson, "Levi is a national monument." Their conversation laid the groundwork and provided the inspiration for Thomson to move forward with this biography, especially in light of Levi's death just nine months later.

The first chapter begins with that tragic event. On April 11, 1987, Levi is found in the stairwell of his building, having plunged three stories headfirst to his death. Rumors immediately circulate that Levi committed suicide, and after ruling out the possibility of homicide, the high courts agree that he died by his own hand. It is a heartbreaking end for a man who survived so much in life.



The book then moves backward in time, offering a glimpse of the Levi family from the years 1819 to 1919, prior to Primo's birth. Though in his writing, he often portrayed his family as unworldly but erudite and given to flights of fancy, the Levis are actually bankers, and a family scandal ultimately jeopardizes their place in Italian society. By the time Primo is born to Cesare and Rina Levi in Turin, Italy, in 1919, secrets are long buried and Primo grows up in a liberal, educated home of modest means. His sister, Anna Maria, arrives two years later; she and Primo maintain a close relationship all their lives.

Levi's intelligence is obvious, and he enters school a year early. His intellect and curiosity place him among the smartest students, and though he sails through his education, he is an anxious child. Despite the fact that Mussolini runs Italy with an iron fist, there is a surprisingly liberal era at hand, allowing Levi to follow his love of chemistry all the way to university. Then, in 1938, with the enactment of the bigoted Italian Racial Laws, Jews lose virtually all of their civil rights. Despite this, Levi manages to find an adviser for his senior thesis and graduates.

World War II breaks out, and Levi joins an Italian Resistance movement. When the authorities catch him, he confesses to being Jewish in the hopes of avoiding execution for being an Italian partisan. It works, but the authorities first send him to an internment camp, then, later to Auschwitz. He avoids hard labor by securing a job in a rubber factory. By the time Russians liberate the camp, Levi is ill with scarlet fever. Because of his illness, the Russians do not force him on a death march, so, somewhat ironically, scarlet fever saves his life.



It is some ten months before Levi makes it back to Turin, where he spends the rest of his life. He starts talking about his experiences in the death camps. He also starts work at a paint factory. When not at the factory, he works on his first book, If This Is a Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz), a memoir of his Second World War resistance work and subsequent imprisonment at Auschwitz. Just before the book's publication, he marries his longtime love, Lucia. He soon leaves the paint factory and opens a chemical consultancy business with a friend. His job takes him back to Germany—and back to the unpleasant memories of his time there. He and Lucia have a son and daughter.

It is years before If This Is a Man receives its due recognition. In the meantime, Levi continues to write. In 1963, he publishes another memoir, The Truce (U.S. title: The Reawakening). He follows this with several volumes of short stories, poems, essays, and two novels. By the time of his 1987 death, scholars and lay readers alike consider Levi the author of "the essential works of humankind."