Memoirs and Biographies Archives - Centro Primo Levi New York

Where the Wind Blew: A Boyhood Lost in Tangier

November 5, 2026
Culture, Memoirs and Biographies

Michel Emile Bensadon, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013 This memoir of coming of age in Morocco in the 1950s is also the memoir of a lost nation. The author's childhood coincides with the end of the idyllic Sephardic culture that…

Without Return: Memoirs of an Egyptian Jew 1930-1957

November 5, 2026
Communities, Memoirs and Biographies

Jacques Sardas, Thebes Press, 2017 An inspiring story of finding hope in frightening times, of exodus and determination, and of timeless questions shared among generations “When my grandson Jake was around fifteen years old, he and I decided to share…

A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi

November 5, 2026
Academia, Memoirs and Biographies, Stories

Edited and with an Introduction by Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya Stein; Translation, Transliteration, and Glossary by Isaac Jerusalmi, Stanford University Press, 2012 This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated…

The Ottoman Catalogue is a curated section of our Bookstore featuring English-language classics and new scholarship on Ottoman history and culture. It explores the impact of nationalism on the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of its decline and dissolution for Europe, and the histories of peoples, lands, religions, and their books before the concept of “the Middle East” emerged as a political and geographical term.

Following two decades of research, programming, and publishing on the history of nationalism, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, Centro Primo Levi moved its attention to the period before 1922, exploring the stories, ideas, exchanges, and transformations that occurred over six centuries of Ottoman rule.

The era that ushered in the rise of the workers movement, totalitarianiasm, the Spanish Civil War, the fall of three empires, the shaping of modern nation-states, and the establishment of an economy based on industrial and scientific growth, banking, and warfare, also brought to an end cultures, concepts of time, language, and rituals that today’s observers often struggle to appreciate.

Much of this history has attracted modest attention from American and English-language scholarship. However, over the past few years, there has been an increase in original and translated research and publications, showcasing this period from various angles and perspectives. As the “Middle East” storms into our societies, challenging the vocabulary of public life, as well as its ethical and epistemological paradigms, we feel that attempting to move our gaze back into this past may help us refine our sensibility and interpretational tools.