If This Is a Man
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If This Is a Man (Se Questo è un Uomo) is a book by the Italian author Primo Levi. It describes his experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War.
If This Is A Man was rejected by Einaudi, the most important publishing house in Levi's home city of Turin. A small publisher brought out the book in November 1947. Only 1,500 copies were sold. Levi had to wait until 1958 before Einaudi published it, in a revised form. This led to its translation into English in 1959, its translation into many other languages, and its eventual acceptance as a classic.
A powerful, vivid remembrance of the lager system, If This Is a Man stands above similar works also due to its literary value - a prose of uncommon, neat clarity, with hints even of humor here and there, used to narrate things that simply shouldn't have been and cannot be humanely understood. Not hate of spirit of revenge, but testimony to the bitter truth of the oppression of man to man is the key to the book and what sustained Levi's drive to write as soon as he returned home from his long, harsh exile.
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