Moments of Reprieve

"One of the most important and gifted writers of our time" --Italo Calvino

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century: a man who survived one of the ugliest times in history, yet who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with an unaffected tenderness.

Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, "the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue." Each centres on an individual who--whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter--discovers one of the "bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve."

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