The first English publication of seventeen classic Primo Levi stories marks the twentieth anniversary of his death. "In Levi's writing, nothing is superfluous and everything is essential."--Saul Bellow 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."
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Poignant work from a sadly typecast author:
That Primo Levi remains the author of perhaps the finest memoir of the Holocaust remains beyond dispute. His crisp vivid prose have helped half a century of readers imagine the unimaginable, yet Levi's work extended far beyond his memoirs of the evil he endured, but unfortunately, like lodestones, those works weighted down the vast body of his writings, often obscuring them from the view of potential readers. These other works, which include poetry, short stories, and at least one novel, defy easy... more info
Not "primo" material:
Primo Levi is one of my favorites, but this book really exposes how he has changed over time. Divided into his earlier and later stories, the book divides pretty cleanly along those lines into classic Primo Levi and newer stuff that could easily have remained unpublished. I was especially looking forward to Bear Meat which is an elaboration of some stories he includes in the Periodic Table; it did not dissappoint. A few of the other stories were also great - the one about the captured partisan, for... more info
Primo Levi-A Tranquil Star:
Primo Levi is the most honest intepreter of the Holocaust and of his own life and experiences. He envelopes the reader and invites him to become part of him as he tells about his life, experiences and the philosophy that is his life. One can feel his sensitivity and honesty in all his writing-he is not out to impress but rather to document in language that is sophisticated but clear. I have read all his books, he has molded the way I see life and what I expect of it and myself. This book is a collection of... more info
Uneven, but find your own favorites among these tales:
This is between a three and a four "star" effort compared to the best of Levi already published, but it remains for those of us limited to English-language versions for Levi's work a welcome arrival on the small shelf of his writing over nearly forty years. These stories appear in English for the first time, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of his death. This thin anthology gathers seventeen short tales--not all of them are full-fledged stories. They range from a park full of figures from... more info
