Synopses & Reviews
The first English publication of seventeen classic Primo Levi stories marks the twentieth anniversary of his death.
A Tranquil Star, the first new American collection of Primo Levi previously untranslated fiction to appear since 1990, affirms his position as one of the twentieth century's most enduring writers. These seventeen stories, first published in Italian between 1949 and 1986, demonstrate Levi's extraordinary range, taking the reader from the primal resistance of a captured partisan fighter to a middle-aged chemist experimenting with a new paint that wards off evil, to the lustful thoughts of an older man obsessed with a mysterious woman in a seaside villa.
In the title story, Levi demonstrates his unerringly tragic understanding of the fragility of the universe through the tale of a pensive astronomer, terrified by the possibility that a long-dormant star might explode and reduce the entire planet to vapor. This remarkable new collection affirms Italo Calvino's conviction that Levi was "one of the most important and gifted writers of our time."
Review
"In Levi's writing, nothing is superfluous and everything is essential." Saul Bellow
Review
"The stories are breathtaking in their breadth of offerings, yet Levi's clarity of voice is consistently offset by his familiar misdirection....This collection is a noble literary achievement." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[A] posthumous collection of stories that covers the full span of [Levi's] writing career. It's a bit of a grab bag but what a grab bag!...The translations...all read smoothly, capturing Levi's spry leaps of thought and turns of phrase." Seattle Times
Review
"The stories are colored by the inescapable obsession with politics that defines the Italian psyche. They tend toward the allegorical, but they are also incisive and thought-provoking." Chicago Tribune
Review
"The allegorical stories here feel clever, but sometimes labored in their striving for originality, less distinctive than his substantial memoirs or than The Periodic Table and the three or four best of his poems. Though it doesn't represent Levi's major work, it completes his important library in English." Mona Simpson, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
The first English publication of 17 classic Primo Levi stories marks the 20th anniversary of his death.
Synopsis
, the first new American collection of Primo Levi previously untranslated fiction to appear since 1990, affirms his position as one of the twentieth century's most enduring writers.
Synopsis
These seventeen stories, first published in Italian between 1949 and 1986, demonstrate Levi's extraordinary range, taking the reader from the primal resistance of a captured partisan fighter to a middle-aged chemist experimenting with a new paint that wards off evil, to the lustful thoughts of an older man obsessed with a mysterious woman in a seaside villa. In the title story, Levi demonstrates his unerringly tragic understanding of the fragility of the universe through the tale of a pensive astronomer, terrified by the possibility that a long-dormant star might explode and reduce the entire planet to vapor. This remarkable new collection affirms Italo Calvino's conviction that Levi was "one of the most important and gifted writers of our time."
About the Author
Primo Levi (19191987), a chemist by training, gained international recognition for his 1959 memoir
Survival in Auschwitz.
Ann Goldstein, an editor at The New Yorker, won the PEN Prize for Italian translation in 1993.
Alessandra Bastagli, a native of Milan, is an editor at Palgrave/Macmillan.