A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Short Stories of Primo Levi
by Primo Levi
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Book Summary Information
Author: Primo LeviTranslator: Ann Goldstein
Translator: Alessandra Bastagli
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2007-04-11
ISBN: 0393064689
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Short Stories of Primo Levi
Book Review: Poignant work from a sadly typecast author
Summary: 5 Stars
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 categorization. All sparkle with Levi's razor style. Like Calvino, Levi was a man who sought to break the bonds of convention, to communicate with the reader in a way at once intellectual and visceral. Yet for years, unless you read Italian, you were denied access to these works.
Considerable then is the debt readers owe Goldstein and Bastagli, translators of the new Levi collection, "A Tranquil Star." The stories here run the range of Levi's work, from brief tales taken from his own life, such as a story of a captured partisan ("The Death of Marinese") or a tale within a tale of mountain climbers ("Bear Meat"). Other stories show a humorous, fantastical bend, like "Censorship in Bitinia" in which a nation's censor office discovers that the "essential" process can be deleterious to health, and seek to find an animal that can carry it out and "Gladiator" about a sporting event in which pedestrians duel with cars. In "Knall" Levi offers a Calvinoesque scifi comment on society, discussing the rage for a new gadget which allows people to murder one another silently, albeit only at close range.
Not every one of these stories will grab every reader, yet all should admire Levi's effort to push the bounds of standard narrative and dig deep into the ills and foibles of the society around him. His gift for allegory and imagery were rare, and unappreciated beyond a narrow readership. With the publication of "A Tranquil Star" a great many new readers can discover this giant of 20th Century prose, and will almost surely beg for the these translators to continue their work.
Summary of A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Short Stories of Primo Levi
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."Biographies & Memoirs Books
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