Shortly after completing The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi committed suicide. The manner of his death was sudden, violent and unpremeditated, and there are some who argue that he killed himself because he was tormented by guilt – guilt that he had survived the horrors of Auschwitz while others, better than he, had gone to the wall. ‘The Drowned and the Saved dispels the myth that Primo Levi forgave the Germans for what they did to his people.

He didn’t, and couldn’t forgive. He refused, however, to indulge in what he called “the bestial vice of hatred” which is an entirely different matter. The voice that sounds in his writing is that of a reasonable man …it warns and reminds us that the unimaginable can happen again.

Format: Paperback
Published: in UK in 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Pages: 256
Language: English
ISBN 13: 9780349138640
ISBN 10: 0349138648