1\/15\/16 \u00a0 \u00a0Public Books \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMonumental. . . . Lively, poised, brand-new versions of all Levi\u2019s books and collections, many complete here for the first time in English, and a rich seam of his occasional, uncollected writings from the 1940s to the 1980s . . . . One of the signal achievements of these\u00a0Complete Works<\/i>\u00a0is to give us the full range of [Levi\u2019s] complexity, to show us Levi probing and reflecting, inventing and telling stories across a spectrum of fascinations .\u00a0. . . The harmonies and dissonances between the modes of Levi\u2019s work are, to a significant degree, what make him such a distinctive, subtle, and compelling ethical writer, one who ponders how to live in the face of both the extraordinary and the everyday, not through abstractions but through fragments of stories and vignettes of sentient experience and intelligent invention.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Robert Gordon, Public Books<\/i><\/p>\n 12\/23\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wall Street Journal \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIn the years since his death, Levi\u2019s reputation has, if anything, become more sacrosanct, amplified by a growing library of secondary literature. This season\u2019s publishing blockbuster\u2014a three\u2010volume set titled \u2018The Complete Works of Primo Levi\u2019\u2014helps show why.\u00a0\u2026The project was the creation of\u00a0Robert Weil,\u00a0the editor of Liveright Press who accomplished something similar for\u00a0Isaac Babel.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal<\/i><\/p>\n 12\/15\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Republic \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cA remarkable three-volume set of memoirs, novels, short stories, essays, commentary, book reviews, and poetry, the\u00a0Complete Works<\/i>\u00a0now enables us to appreciate the tangle of forms and identities that defined Levi as a writer: memorialist and fantasist, scientist and sensationalist, puritan and jester, poet and political commentator…It gives us a far more eclectic and interesting writer, one who ranged across a vast intellectual terrain that included astronomy, history, linguistics, classical literature, art, current affairs, memory, and religion.\u201d\u00a0–Gavin Jacobson, The New Republic<\/i><\/p>\n 11\/29\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The New York Times Book Review \/ front cover review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cExpertly edited by Ann Goldstein\u2026These three handsome volumes bring into focus the breadth and coherence of his genius, and make unexpectedly clear how deeply his work as a chemist shaped his unsettling work as a moralist and his unique vision of psychology and history\u2026The 3,000 pages of his \u2018Complete Works\u2019 seem tragically few.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Ed Mendelson, The New York Times Book Review<\/i><\/p>\n Dec \u201815\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Harpers \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt is, by any measure, a monumental effort\u2026[Ann Goldstein] has succeeded. What he hear throughout is Primo Levi\u2019s voice: wry, honest, exact, compassionate in its recognition of human frailty, and imbued with (as he once wrote of Charles Darwin) \u2018the sober joy of a man who extracts order from chaos\u2019\u2026Goldstein and her collaborators have performed an amazing service by allowing us to see him, as it were, complete.\u201d\u00a0\u2014James Marcus, Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/p>\n Dec \u201815\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Atlantic \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n Still, if the collection brings new readers and renewed attention, 28 years after his death, to this remarkable artist and man, it will have done important work. Levi is the rare writer about whom it can be said that his literary virtues originate in, and are largely inseparable from, his moral ones. His ability to guide us through the hell of the camps depends upon his powers of precise observation as well as on an eidetic memory of the 11 months of his enslavement. But it also rests upon a superhuman strength of mind, a refusal to distort the record with a spasm of self-pity or sentimentality, of pain or rage or lust for revenge.\u2014\u2014 William Deresiewicz<\/p>\n 11\/30\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Huffington Post \/ \u201c5 Hot Books\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n 11\/18\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Washington Post \/ Best Books of 2015<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cA boxed set of the complete works of the Italian writer captures the breadth of his literary career: his devastating 1947 memoir, \u2018If This Is a Man,\u2019 alongside his stories, poetry and hitherto uncollected fiction and nonfiction.\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Michael Dirda, Washington Post<\/i><\/p>\n 11\/18\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish Week \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cPrimo Levi was (as is the case with all world-class writers) multi-dimensional and multi-layered…A singularly valuable contribution\u2026The collection reintroduces us to a literary master, a writer who transcends the Holocaust genre.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Jerome A. Chanes, Jewish Week<\/p>\n 11\/5\/15 New York Review of Books \/ review<\/p>\n \u201cLevi\u2019s best writing was about his life, about questions of freedom and survival\u2026[A] remarkable achievement.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Tim Parks, New York Review of Books<\/p>\n 10\/4\/15 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Philadelphia Inquirer \/ review\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWonderful\u2026You cannot forget [Levi]. He writes clearly, cogently, concretely, compactly. His is a scientist’s eye, and he often said (with his trademark dry humor) that the main model for his writing was the lab report. Yet in the best contemporary sense, he’s also stylish, laboratory-scrupulous in sentence, description, and word choice, always with a sense of the lively mind behind the words\u2026. Levi is among the prime writers to emerge after World War II. This treasure trove will cement his reputation.\u201d\u00a0\u2014John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer<\/p>\n 9\/28\/15 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Associated Press \/ feature story on wire\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n Autumn \u201815\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American Scholar \/ review<\/p>\n \u201cA major and most welcome cultural event. It will astonish most of Levi\u2019s English-speaking readers by revealing the richness and extent of his oeuvre\u2026Levi discharged this duty triumphantly in works of unequaled intellectual rigor, compassion, and modesty.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Louis Begley, American Scholar<\/i><\/p>\n 9\/28\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Yorker \/ review\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cRepresents a monumental and noble endeavor on the part of its publisher, its general editor, Ann Goldstein, and the many translators who have produced new versions of Levi\u2019s work. Although his best-known work has already benefitted from fine English translation, it\u2019s a gift to have nearly all his writing gathered together, along with work that has not before been published in English.\u201d\u00a0\u2014James Wood, The New Yorker<\/i><\/p>\n 9\/28\/15 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chronicle of Higher Education \/ review\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cA binge reader of The Complete Works of Primo Levi<\/i> will encounter science fiction, natural histories, and accounts of young love. Levi not only plunders chemical terminology for metaphors describing human affairs (his memoir The Periodic Table<\/i> is a brilliant example) but also holds up precise, restrained scientific analysis as a model for prose\u2026As heir to the Italian Renaissance [Levi asks]: What is it to be human?…Amid the bluster and bilge of the violent moment, we need that kind of voice more than ever.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Steven G. Kellman, Chronicle of Higher Education<\/i><\/p>\n 9\/24\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Time Magazine \/ feature and interview with Ann Goldstein\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n 9\/23\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Washington Post \/ review<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cOld school publishing on a grand scale. Once more, Robert Weil of W.W. Norton, now director of its Liveright imprint, has produced a magnificent edition of an important, if slightly neglected, author\u2026For such a gift as \u2018The Complete Works of Primo Levi,\u2019 one should probably do little more than express thanks\u2026Whether as witness or imaginative artist, Levi stands high among the truly essential European writers of the past century.\u201d\u00a0–Michael Dirda, Washington Post<\/i><\/p>\n Sep \u201915\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bookslut \/ feature<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHe’s a great writer. Reading some passages is like watching a braid of distilled water arc into a beaker. You can delight in the beauty or, because of the clarity, “forget” that this is language at all and experience it as unmediated truth.\u201d\u00a0\u2014David McConnell, Bookslut<\/p>\n 8\/4\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Critical Mass \/ NBCC blog \u201cWhat Are You Reading this Summer?\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n 6\/22\/15\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Publishers Weekly \/ Fall Announcements<\/p>\n