Outrageous Fortune–Luck and the Holocaust

Gordon examines the literary and philosophical dimensions of luck, chance, and fortune, tracing their evolution from classical myths to Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare. He explores how Fortuna was reinterpreted by Christian and Renaissance humanist writers, shaping patterns of thought and storytelling.

In the book’s second half, Gordon leaps to the 20^th century, uncovering compelling and unexpected links between this tradition and the Shoah. He grapples with the unsettling question of survival in the Lager—who lived, why, and what does it mean to say, as Primo Levi often did, that survival was ultimately a matter of pure chance?

About the Author

Robert Gordon is a scholar of modern Italian literature, cinema, and cultural history. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including Primo Levi’s Ordinary Virtues, The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010, and Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity. His work focuses on Holocaust memory, Primo Levi, and postwar Italian culture. Gordon has taught at Oxford and Cambridge and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.