If Not Now, When? - Softcover

Levi, Primo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501167642 ISBN 13: 9781501167645

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2017

Synopsis

Based off a true story, a group of Jewish partisans fight the Nazis behind enemy lines during the final year of World War II. Primo Levi's powerful novel is equal parts suspenseful and philosophical.

World War II is in its final throes. As the Nazis retreat from the Red Army, much of Europe is left in total devastation. Against this backdrop, the watchmaker Mendel, who lost his wife and entire village to the Nazis, meets Leonid, a teenage escapee from a concentration camp. Stranded behind German lines, the pair makes their way through a desolate landscape to join a group of resistance fighters intent on sabotaging the enemy and liberating Jewish prisoners.

An epic story stretching from Eastern Soviet Union to Northern Italy, If Not Now, When? is a novel about acts of resistance--both small and large--against impossible odds.

Along with Elie Wiesel and Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi is remembered as one of the most powerful and perceptive writers on the Holocaust and the Jewish experience during World War II. This is an essential book both for students and literary readers. Reading Primo Levi is a lesson in the resiliency of the human spirit.

About this title

Review:

This book achieves many things - too many, really, to itemise ... yet one is left with an enormous sense of optimism and gratitude to the author (LISTENER)

Levi is a master whose hand never slips... I was convinced by every detail, and absurdly shaken to realise at the end that it was indeed fiction, however well grounded in fact. I knew these people, and I wanted to know more (THE TIMES)

Levi writes of unimaginable hardships ... and of exhilaration... (FINANCIAL TIMES)

A novel full of horrors, but wonderfully uplifting and optimistic in its tribute to the human spirit. (SUNDAY TIMES)

Book Description:

*The story of a group of Partisan guerillas in Poland during WW2 - by the master of holocaust writing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1501167642
• ISBN 13: 9781501167645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384