Primo Levi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 31 July 1919 Turin, Italy |
| Died | 11 April 1987 (aged 67) Turin, Italy |
| Resting place | Cimitero Monumentale di Torino, Turin, Italy |
| Pen name | Damiano Malabaila (used for some of his fictional works) |
| Occupation | Writer, chemist |
| Language | Italian |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | Degree in chemistry |
| Alma mater | University of Turin |
| Period | 1947–1986 |
| Genre | Autobiography, short story, essay |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse | Lucia Morpurgo (1947–1987, his death) |
| Children | 2 |
Primo Michele Levi[1][2] (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was a Jewish-Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include If This Is a Man (1947, published as Survival in Auschwitz in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories each named after a chemical element as it played a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.[3]
Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although this has been disputed by some of his friends and associates and attributed to an accident.[4][5]
- ^ Ian Thomson, Primo Levi (2019) pp. 17–18, 138
- ^ Carole Angier,The Double Bond: Primo Levi: A Biography, Penguin 2002 p.35:'Although Cesare never talked about his father he called his son after him, Primo Michele – I don’t know whether Primo thought of this as a fateful link but at the end of his life he thought more than once of his grandfather. Several times he spoke of a hereditary taint of suicide in his family. What he didn’t know about it was that it had come out not once but twice in his grandfather’s generation and he did not know that Michele himself had thrown himself to his death from a height, as he himself would do 99 years later. Michele had even leapt into a small inner courtyard, as he would leapt from a stairwell.'
- ^ Randerson, James (20 October 2006). "Levi's memoir beats Darwin to win science book title". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2012.
- ^ Intern (9 July 2012). "Primo Levi's Last Moments". Boston Review. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
- ^ "Primo Levi's Work Outshines His Murky Death". Moment Magazine. 11 November 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2021.