Customer Reviews
A Witness to Barbarism - By: Mr. James G. Thompson, 21 Oct 2008 
I have meant to read this for a long time, & the wait was worth it. Levi - certainlyin translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly & appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, & this surely accounts for the clarity of recall & description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.
Indispensible - a necessary read - By: Mr. M. D. R. Ghori, 27 Jun 2008 If you want to understand the holocaust, how & why it happened, then you need to read If This Is A Man. Levi dispenses with his emotional responses & describes what happened with a frightening detachment. Through his eyes, Levi shows us how the Nazi machine sought to rob their victims of all vestiges of their humanity & thereby justify their treatment of the camp victims. Thisin turn led to the horrible events that we all know so well. Levi, however, does not just aim to show us the horror of the events, but understand them. Thus, amongst the debasement of lifein the camps, we see how necessary it becomes to bathe with dirty water - not to clean yourself, but to regain fragments of your own humanity. This book is essential if we are to understand why the holocaust happened so easily & through it we can piece together how to prevent it happening again. Or at least understand the processes through which a society allows itself to sleepwalk into such nightmares. The reader walks away with nothing but sheer admiration for Levi & his abililty to continue to analyse his experiences despite the brutality of what he had to endure. It is an admiration that will be tinged with sadness when you learn of his eventual fate.
A truly necessary book - By: Jeremy Walton, 21 Apr 2008 Philip Roth has described this as "one of the century's truly necessary books", & the adjective feels exactly right. It's not enjoyable, or uplifting, or brilliant, or sentimental, or entertaining, but you feel compelled to read it, & to tell everyone else about it. Previously, I thought I knew a little about the prison camps & the Nazi program for the extermination of the Jews, but Levi's dispassionate account of his world brings out a level of everyday detail that - incredibly - is almost mundanein its completeness.
In his introduction to the book, Levi signs off almost regretfully, saying "It seems to me unecessary to add that none of the facts are invented". At first, you wonder why he should - however gently - remind his reader of this, but then you're plunged into a world of such unbelievable horror that your only hope of relief would be that it wasn't all true. There are all kinds of waysin which he illustrates what it's like to livein a place that's so unrelentingly dedicated to your humiliation & destruction but, for me, one of the most memorable moments came when he was to be interviewed by one of the chemistsin the rubber factory attached to the camp (in a withering aside that highlights yet another aspect of the total waste of human life, he also points out that -in spite of all the slave labour, all the prisoners who were worked to death by the Germansin the factory - it never actually produced anything).
He describes how the man looked at him "as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who livein different worlds". It's almost impossible to understand the depths of inhumanity that the Nazis plumbed, but Levi does that here, & reaches across the page to remind us of the perils & joys of the human condition.
Hard to recommend, hard to avoid recommending - By: Bezza, 29 Jan 2008 Where do you start with a book like this? It's brilliantly written, & compelling reading - for the quality of the narrative as much (more?) than the subject matter. But, of course, the subject matter makes it virtually unreadable. How much do you really want to know about the experience of drawing breathin one of the Auschwitz camps? How little imagination do you need to have, to need the monstrosity spelt outin all its tiny, obsessive detail? It appalled me to find myself turning the pages, unable to put it down without the expedient of falling asleep. It was like some twisted snuff porn on one level, as Levi led me through the minutiae of violence & death, like I was rubber-necking into the mangled driver's seat of a road fatality, & running my fingers through the spilled brains. Too much; all too much. Yet the book is an utterly compelling discussion of what defines 'man'; where the boundaries lie; what morality is; what language is; what judgement is. Like a single, extended essay on the big questions. Levi does not judge, he observes, with withering clarity, & leaves the reader to pick up the pieces. Along with All Quiet on the Western Front & one or two others, it's one of those books I felt immediately that I should go on to studyin depth, while knowing that I will struggle ever to read so much as a line of it again. Levi observes that the experience of Auschwitz was like taking partin some social & psychological experiment of the most monstrous & preposterous scale, that only the most insane combination of events & people could have facilitated. Reading this book felt a lot like being allowed to peep into a world of unique atrocity; to share the thoughts of someone who had not only touched the depths, but had spent months grovelling around on the bottom. It felt both a privilege & a kind of outrage; shaming, emptying, & stupidly enlightening,in a way I didn't want to be enlightened. Am Iin any way improved for having read it? Or scarred by the experience,in my own tiny way? I have no idea yet. Read it at your peril, but it is a stunning piece of writing & a terrible witness.
A must read - By: alastair_h, 27 Dec 2006 Beautifully written on subjects only personally witnessedin a personal way with the clinical reporting of a professional chemist. If you read often or infrequently this is a must read. Readin conjunction with Auschwitz report.
