The Double Bond; The Life of Primo Levi

by Carole Angier

• ISBN13: 9780374528980
• ISBN10: 0374528985
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2003-11-26
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

One of the most eagerly awaited biographies of recent years, a "meticulous and visionary"* life of the great Italian writer and witness to the Holocaust Perhaps the most important writer to emerge from the death camps, Primo Levi spent sixty-five of his sixty-seven years in Turin, Italy, where he worked as a chemist by day and wrote at night in a study that had been his childhood bedroom. Thanks to his memoirs, which includeSurvival in Auschwitz,The Reawakening, and the classicThe Periodic Table, he became widely known and loved as a supremely moral man, one who had transmuted the agonies of persecution into understanding and clarity. The whole world was shocked when he died in 1987, apparently having thrown himself into the stairwell of the house in which he had been born. Carole Angier has spent nearly ten years writing this meticulously researched, vivid, and moving biography, which illuminates the design of Levi's interior life: how he lived as a man divided, not only between chemistry and writing but between hope and despair, and how the duty to testify released him to communicate, which was his deepest need. Carole Angier's biography of Jean Rhys (1990) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award and won the Writers' Guild Award for Non-Fiction. She is the Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick, and lives in Oxfordshire. Perhaps the most important writer to emerge from the death camps, Primo Levi spent sixty-five of his sixty-seven years in Turin, Italy, where he worked as a chemist by day and wrote at night in a study that had been his childhood bedroom. Thanks to his memoirs, which includeSurvival in Auschwitz,The Reawakening, and his autobiographical masterpieceThe Periodic Table, he became widely known and loved as a supremely moral man, one who had transmuted the agonies of persecution into understanding and clarity. The whole world was shocked when he died in 1987, apparently having thrown himself into the stairwell of the house in which he had been born. Carole Angier has spent nearly ten years writing this meticulously researched biography, which illuminates the design of Levi's interior life: how he lived as a man divided, not only between chemistry and writing but also between hope and despair, and how the duty to testify released him to communicate, which was his deepest need. "[A] vastly detailed and intricately layered biography . . . Meticulous and visionary . . . The entwined complexities and contradictions of man and writer are caught in Angier's vastly detailed and intricately layered biography."Richard Eder,The New York Times Book Review "Meticulous and visionary . . . The entwined complexities and contradictions of man and writer are caught in Angier's vastly detailed and intricately layered biography."Richard Eder,The New York Times Book Review "Compelling and beautifully written . . . Ms. Angier's book is devoted to capturing the inner man as much as the outward circumstances of his life . . . [Her] detailed account of the ordeal in the camps is painstakingly presented and told with a respectful care."Erich Eichman,The Wall Street Journal "Brilliantly unorthodox . . . [Angier] is Levi's perfect biographera natural foil for his own reluctance to reveal his real selfand her work is the perfect complement to his, daring and justified in each of its own liberties . . . Her book is a remarkable success. Not only for its own achievement, but also because it restores to Levi's life the dignity his death seemed to betray."Alex Abramovich,The Village Voice "The Double Bondhas the pace and grip of a thriller. I could hardly put it down from the start to finish. Primo Levi was a natural storyteller whose fearful

Author Biography

Carole Angier's biography of Jean Rhys (1990) was short-listed for the Whitbread Biography Award and won the Writers' Guild Award for Non-Fiction. She is the Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick, and lives in Oxfordshire.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Illustration Acknowledgements	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Introduction	p. xxiii
Paradiso	p. 5
Paradise Lost	p. 25
Botticelli Angels: 1919-30	p. 37
The Hare and the Tortoise	p. 56
Primo Levi Primo: 1930-37	p. 68
The Hare and the Tortoise II	p. 106
Chemistry: 1937-41	p. 112
Alberto	p. 161
Nickel: 1941-2	p. 167
Burning	p. 184
Milan: July 1942 - 8 September 1943	p. 195
Gabriella	p. 224
Amay and Aosta: September 1943 - January 1944	p. 230
Fossoli: February 1944	p. 262
Auschwitz: 22 February 1944 - 27 January 1945	p. 282
The Truce: 27 January - 19 October 1945	p. 368
Levi Uomo: 1945-7	p. 419
Dancing	p. 473
Levi Uomo II: 1948-63	p. 476
Corso Re Umberto 75	p. 517
Centaur: 1963-75	p. 529
Lilith	p. 585
Writer: 1975-85	p. 591
The Double Bond	p. 651
The Drowned and the Saved: 1986	p. 657
The Double Bind: 1987	p. 697
Notes	p. 733
Bibliography	p. 847
Index	p. 865
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