Bookshelf Travelling for Even More Insane Times
Posted in Chemistry, History, Memes at 12:00 on 27 September 2020
Bookshelf Travelling for Insane Times was started by Judith and is now hosted by Katrina at Pining for the West.
The main thrust of this week’s post is to focus on books by Primo Levi.
The times Levi lived through were even more insane than these. An Italian Jew, he was rounded up in February 1944 and transported to Auschwitz, where his experience as a Chemist allowed him to gain a position as assistant in an I G Farben laboratory there. Ironically he was saved from almost certain death by being ill with scarlet fever and in the camp hospital when, on the approach of the Red Army, the SS evacuated the camp and forced the prisoners on a death march further away from the front.
He translated his experiences into a very readable series of books, nine of which are on these shelves (ten if you count This is a Man and The Truce as two.)
Levi’s death forty years later was ruled a suicide by the coroner but he may have fallen from his flat as a result of dizziness.
This photo also shows Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, a Graham Greene omnibus, Mary Somerville‘s personal recollections in Queen of Science (which is the good lady’s and I have not yet read) plus Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits.
Tags: Auschwitz, Bookshelf Travelling, Bookshelf Travelling For Insane Times, Chemistry, Graham Greene, History, House of the Spirits, I G Farben, Isabel Allende, Mary Somerville, Peter Høeg, Primo Levi
tracybham
11 October 2020 at 21:55
That collection of books by Primo Levi looks very interesting. The author is entirely new to me. You are right that there have been times even more insane that what we are experiencing now.
jackdeighton
11 October 2020 at 22:17
tracybham,
Levi’s books are not easy reading of course but they are a valuable testament to what he lived through. Sadly, those lessons have been forgotten in some quarters.