Primo Levi's Ordinary Virtues: From Testimony to Ethics

Gordon, Robert S. C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198159633 ISBN 13: 9780198159636

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2001

Primo Levi was perhaps the most humane and eloquent writer of testimony to emerge from the Nazi Holocaust. But he also went beyond testimony in his work, tackling many of the founding ethical questions of what it is to be human, 'how to live'. Whether in accounts of the concentration camps, essays, science-fiction, autobiography, poetry, or fiction, he always approached his writing with a questioning, ethically open and alert eye. This book explores the extraordinary depth of Levi the ethical writer across his entire oeuvre for the first time, by way of thirteen so-called 'ordinary virtues', that is the ways and means Levi forges for practically and compassionately engaging with the world. It draws on a wide range of recent thinking about Holocaust literature and the general relationship between literature and ethics. From the book a new understanding of Levi's importance as both witness and writer emerges, enhancing his status as one of the key literary figures of the twentieth century.

Review:

This book will soon become one of the most valuable critical texts on Levi, because it encourages readers to go back to Levi's works and re-examine them from new philosophical and critical perspectives. (Italian Studies)

Gordon draws on an impressive philosophical and critical framework ... His scholarly approach also involves the welcome choice of using a language which is clear and precise without being esoteric, learned yet accessible to a wide readership. (Italian Studies)

This scholarly, sensitive, and insightful monograph is an important addition to the body of international Levi criticism. (Italian Studies)

Extraordinary book ... Generous quotations from Levi make the book a pleasure to read ... the chapter on story-telling exemplifies Gordon's approach at its most appealing ... Gordon's book should be read by anyone interested in how a better world might just be possible. (Jewish Chronicle)