Moments of Reprieve

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“He is our Dante . . . writing a modern masterpiece about his journey into Hell . . . [that is] unique in the literature of the Holocaust.” —USA Today

A Penguin Classic

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 centers 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.”

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.“In Levi’s writing, nothing is superfluous and everything is essential.”
—Saul Bellow
 
“One of the most important and gifted writers of our time.”
—Italo CalvinoPrimo Levi (1919–1987), an Italian Jew, did not come to the wide attention of the English-reading audience until the last years of his life. A survivor of the Holocaust and imprisonment in Auschwitz, Levi is considered to be one of the century’s most compelling voices. His books include Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, The Periodic Table, and If Not Now, When?.

Ruth Feldman (translator; 1911–2003) was a poet and translator of Italian literature. She received many awards and honors for her translations, including the John Florio Prize, the Italo Calvino Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.US

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