The Reawakening | 
|  | | | Title: | The Reawakening | | Author: | Primo Levi | | Publisher: | Touchstone | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 December, 1995 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0684826356 / 9780684826356 | | List Price: | $15.00 | | You Save: | $4.05 | | Amazon Price: | $10.95 | |
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Customer Reviews:
• Carnival World 14 January, 2001
Like Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table, The Reawakening is populated with Levi's brilliant language and fascination with character. In Survival, Table and Reawakening, Levi is careful not to force facts into a satisfyingly explanatory story. The Reawakening is a picaresque without the moral center. Levi travels home through a carnival world, a Europe simultaneously stunned and ecstatic, a landscape of displaced characters, Greek villagers in Polish refugee camps, complicit Germans sitting down to the first course of horrific recent history and guilt, cadaverous lager inmates staggering into a world forever altered. It is a world populated with impresarios, rakes, opportunists, suicides, daredevils and rubes. But, more than anything else, The Reawakening is brimming with life; Levi makes his way home eyes forward. I found myself thinking of two other books while reading Reawakening--Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Like Kosinski, Levi reminds us that much of rural eastern Europe was cruel and primitive before the Nazi's made a virtue of these qualities. And, like Wolfe's Gant family, the characters in Levi's account are often exuberant to the point of mania. I think that Levi is one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. In this way, I'm not a reliable critic. Reviewing The Reawakening is akin to reviewing Hamlet for me.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2VBWIEWSC3LPB
• A Great Work 06 December, 2001
This is just one of the many brilliant writings of Primo Levi but it tells a tale of Holocaust survival that is often overlooked. Most narratives seem to end at liberation and this one gives us a detailed view of what happened afterwards. This is the book that the movie "The Truce" (which is also the title of this book in Italy)is loosely based on. I don't think the movie did the book justice at all and so I would especially recommend this book to anyone that has seen the movie. Like all of Levi's works it is written in a sparse yet fantastic style and it really is a great follow up to "Survival In Auschwitz".
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2ZRTDFIZS91G0
• Troubles Overcome Are Good To Tell 14 November, 2000
Published in 1963, "The Reawakening" is a narrative of Primo Levi's tortuous journey back to Turin after liberation from Auschwitz. In fact, it is a follow-up of "Survival in Auschwitz." As stated by Primo Levi, "after Auschwitz, I had an absolute need to write, not only as a moral duty, but as psychological need, to free myself from anguish." Out of 650 Italian Jews who journeyed to Auschwitz, with Primo Levi, only 20 left the camp alive. Levi assumes the calm, sober language of the witness, with no manifested hate and purpose of revenge, devoid of bitterness. His prose is precise, clear, with no embellishment, lively transmitting his bewilderment of the simple fact that he had survived.The reader cannot help be amazed by the details recorded in Levi's memory, places, names, characters, personalities, it is as though he wrote everything in locus. His memory was a blessing... but might have also been his tormenter... After a long period of depression, Levi died after falling from a stairwell in his Turin home. The question will always remain whether it was or not suicide. Levi, through his writings, symbolizes the triumph of reasoning and humanity over madness and cruelty.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1QC2BOU3AL7L8
• Outstanding 08 July, 2008
I was surprised to see so few reviews for this book on Amazon. "The Reawakening" is one of the great works of literature of the 20th century - and one of the most enjoyable. Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz" is a good book, and obviously a very important historical document. But with "The Reawakening," Levi becomes a truly great writer. His writerly gifts are impressive on so many levels -- but it is his uncanny, Chekhov-like ability to sketch characters and situations with astonishing vividness that is most impressive. And what characters, what situations. After his release from Auschwitz, Levi was faced with an epic, roundabout journey through the Soviet Union before he was finally able to return to his Italian homeland. Although fraught with difficulties on every side, Levi was free -- and the book reflects the joie de vivre of his suddenly newfound freedom. There are astonishing, unforgettable characters on these pages - rogues and saints. I envy the reader encountering the pleasures of this book for the first time.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2O91QKXP35684
• An Important And Entertaining Memoir 31 January, 2004
The Reawakening opens in January 1945, when author Primo Levi is released from a Nazi concnetration camp by Russian troops. His health almost ruined, suffering from unbearable knowledge of the crimes committed in the camps, Levi re-enters the world to find that it has been turned upside down by the war. Improbably - he explains in an afterword that it is not in his nature to hate - he finds in himself a capacity to see the world afresh, almost as a child would. In the rest of the book, we accompany Levi and his companions on a picaresque through postwar Europe and Russia as they try to make their way back to their native Italy. While their sufferings are legion, Levi takes great pleasure in food, in his fellow man, and in nature. In particular, he displays a fine appreciation for the absurdities visited on the refugees by their well-intentioned but inept Russian rescuers.This book is an entertaining read. Beyond that, it is an important document of the Holocaust. And beyond that, it is an important resource for modern readers who are finding their own way through an often absurd world. Highly recommended.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2N3YAM4K3ATM
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