Toni Morrison on Primo Levi’s defiant humanism

In his poetry and prose, Primo Levi refuses to regard the crimes of the Holocaust with any fascination, and instead focuses on what it means to be human. The Beloved author celebrates the Jewish chemist’s belief in the individual

Related: Howard Jacobson: rereading If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

The Complete Works of Primo Levi is far more than a welcome opportunity to re-evaluate and re-examine historical and contemporary plagues of systematic necrology; it becomes a brilliant deconstruction of malign forces. The triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows virtually everywhere in Levi’s writing. For a number of reasons, his works are singular amid the wealth of Holocaust literature.

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