• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

SOLD

Réf : 62561

Set an alert

A question about this book?

Add to my virtual collection

Primo LEVI traduit de l'italien par Michèle CAUSSE

J'étais un homme - Se questo è un uomo [Si c'est un homme]

Buchet-Chastel, Paris 1961, 14x19cm, broché.

LEVI Primo
J'étais un homme - Se questo è un uomo
[If This Is A Man]
Buchet/Chastel, Paris 1961, 14 x 19 cm, original wrappers
First edition of the French translation of one of the authoritative works on the Nazi concentration camp system.
Exceptionally rare, this French translation of Primo Levi's first book would go as unnoticed as the original Italian edition that was published in 1947. It was only upon the suicide of its author in 1987 that a second French edition was published and this fundamental testimony on the Shoah became the emblematic work of concentration camp literature.
Michèle Causse's translation reflects the difficulty of transcribing the words of those who witnessed the unspeakable. Above all, however, it was the unconscious refusal to hear these words that contributed to the failure of this first work by Primo Levi, as it similarly did in the case of Robert Antelme's The Human Race, also written and published for the first time in 1947.
Moreover, it was not until this same decade that some of the other greatest works on the Shoah were published: Night by Elie Wiesel, 1958; Bags of Sand by Anna Langfus, 1962; The Long Voyage by Jorge Semprun, 1963; The Truce by Primo Levi, 1963; None of Us Will Return by Charlotte Delbo, 1965 ...
Rare and fine copy of the first translation of Primo Levi's most important work.

• 
• 
• 
•