On February 22, 1944, 650 people were sent to Auschwitz crammed into twelve freight trains. Only Primo Levi and two others survived, after a year-long stay, before their liberation by the Russian army in January 1945.

In the camp, Levi observes everything, remembers everything, narrates everything: the crowding in the barracks; the comrades who were found dead in the morning from hunger and cold; the humiliations and daily labor, under the blows of the "Kapos"; the periodic "selections" where the sick were separated from the healthy to be sent to death; the hangings for example; the trains full of Jews and Gypsies, who were led upon their arrival to the crematoria...

And yet, in this narrative, the most impressive dignity prevails; no expression of hatred, no exaggeration, no exploitation of personal sufferings, but a moral reflection on pain, elevated by a vision of life.

"If This Is a Man," written in 1947, is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature on concentration camps and one of the most shocking testimonies of our times. In Italy, since the 1960s, it has been taught in schools.

The edition includes an appendix with an interview of Primo Levi by Philip Roth ("La Stampa", November 26, 27, 1986), a text by Primo Levi, "The Black Hole of Auschwitz: Polemic Against German Historians," published in the newspaper "La Stampa", January 22, 1987, a text by Claudio Magris, "Epic and Novel in Primo Levi," published in the newspaper "Il Corriere della Sera", June 13, 1982, and a detailed biobibliography.

Reviews:

"With the moral fortitude and intellectual balance of a 20th-century Titan, this small, diligent, quiet chemist steadily undertook to remind us of the German hell on earth, to think about it systematically and reflect on it, and then to render it in an understandable, clear, and modest prose"
(Philip Roth)

"Through the mud, the blows are faced without anger, through this unique humiliation Levi created an incomparable work of art"
(Paul Bailey)

"One of the best Italian writers... One of the few who survived the Holocaust and speaks of his experiences with a gentle voice"
(The Guardian)