The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology - Hardcover

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9781566634458: The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566634458 ISBN 13: 9781566634458

Publisher: Ivan R Dee, 2002

The Search for Roots is an anthology of writings that Primo Levi considered to be essential reading. Beginning with the Book of Job, that drama of the just oppressed by injustice, these thirty pieces, with introductions by Levi, reflect his profound knowledge of science and deep passion for literature, and his survival of Auschwitz, making it a collection that is both universal and poignantly autobiographical. The book demonstrates the breadth of Levi's interests and sympathies, from miniature science-fiction narratives to poetry and technical papers. The title suggests a rather strenuous endeavor, but everything here is marked by a quiet authority.

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Review:

'Among all the writers here, Levi himself is one of the most essential; an enduring reminder of the intellectual, spiritual and human values that the dictatorships of the 20th century tried and thankfully failed to extinguish' -- Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday, June 24 2001

'Fascinating as a picture of Levi's cultural landscape' -- Stephanie Merritt The Observer Review, 22 April 2001

'Levi's search for roots is a rediscovery of printed words that helped to form him...most of the extracts seem either to prefigure the Holocaust or to look back on it' -- Ronald Hayman, Daily Telegraph, 23 June 2001

'Primo Levi gives us a voice of reason from beyond the grave' -- Katrina Goldstone Sunday Tribune, June 24 2001

'The Search for Roots is an anatomy of melancholy overcome. It is Primo Levi's best autobiography.' -- Carole Angier, New Statesman, July 23 2001

'This book is a fascinating journey...the reader feels he is observing nothing less than the construction, at times dangerous, careful and uncertain, of a creative consciousness' -- Peter Walker, Financial Times, July 7/July 8 2001

'This invaluable work exposes one of the 20th century's finest minds. It is a dark, disturbing, bright and uplifting book.' -- Ross Leckie, The Times, July 28 2001

'This is a book packed with pleasurable reading, value and, crucially, with profound insight into this most essential of writers and into the interests and experiences that made him so...there is something exquisitely old-fashioned and elegant about this self-portrait in books.' -- Robert S.C. Gordon, Spectator, July 14 2001

'brave, joyful and life enhancing' -- Joseph Farrell, The Herald [quoted in Money Week, July 27 2001]

About the Author:

Born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, Primo Levi was the son of an educated middle-class Jewish family. He became a research chemist and in December 1943 was arrested as part of the anti-fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz. After the war, Levi resumed his career as a chemist, retiring only in 1975. His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, was published in 1957, and he went on to write many other books, including If Not Now, When? and The Periodic Table, emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust but also as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes. In 1987 he died in a fall that is widely believed to have been suicide.

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