The Complete Works of Primo Levi.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Book review

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF PRIMO LEVI

Edited by Ann Goldstein

W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., N.Y.

2015, Three-Volume Boxed Set, $100.00

Primo Levi, the Italian chemist-turned-author who survived Auschwitz, is presented here for the first time after extended efforts to carefully translate all of his work. Those of us who have rumpled, randomly gathered paperbacks of some of his writing--not all of which has been available in English prior to this presentation--will be giving away those single volumes and providing this collection pride of place.

It is most appropriate that his words come to us in the English-speaking world as more than 10 years of growing anti-Semitism festers again in Europe. For over a decade now, synagogues have been defaced, and Jews spat on, beaten, and stabbed as they walk city streets--all on the continent that claimed, "Never again."

In one memoir, If This Is a Man, Levi recounts the two dreams shared by all in the Nazi death camps: that of food, and the terrible vision of being reunited at last with family and friends, only to have them turn away with disinterest when the story of the death camp experience is shared. In some terrible, prescient way, the ones who would die and those who...