Narrative
If This Is a Man
Se questo è un uomo
Primo Levi · 1947
Synopsis
Arrested in December 1943 after joining a group of partisans, a young Jewish chemist from Turin is interned at the Fossoli camp, then deported in February 1944 to Auschwitz, to the Monowitz camp. He describes the organisation of the camp, the hunger, the cold, the forced labour for the Buna factory, and the methodical humiliation by which the Nazis stripped the prisoners of their dignity, in a neutral tone, seeking to understand what remains of a man.
Context
The book was written in 1946, shortly after the author's return. Refused by the publisher Einaudi, it appeared in 1947 in a small print run from an independent publisher, De Silva, and found its audience only with its reissue by Einaudi in 1958. The title comes from a text placed at the head of the book, which enjoins the reader to remember. In English, Stuart Woolf translated it in 1959, and the American edition first titled it “Survival in Auschwitz”. The first French translation appeared in 1961 under the title “J'étais un homme”; that by Martine Schruoffeneger, from Julliard in 1987, is titled “Si c'est un homme”.
Who it is for
A short narrative in precise, measured language, which describes and analyses rather than complains.
Prizes and reception
The author's complete works in English, published in 2015, took over Stuart Woolf's translation, revised by him.