Great book - Rated 
If this is a man by Primo Levi is a great read. Id recommend it to every 6th former or IB student that is looking for an interesting book as well as an educational one. The book does not contain a vast amount of complex vocabulary and is actually straight forward with its ideas. Whether you are a historical buff or just looking for a book that may interest you and keep you reading then look no further. If this is a man really questions the capabilities of the human race and even if we hate to admit that we are in fact the deadliest species on this planet, Levi shows us the gruesome truth of what we really are.
Profound and Unsentimental - Rated
This double volume of memoirs of Primo Levi's time in Auschwitz is the finest work on the Holocaust I have read.
Levi was an Italian chemist who worked in the chemical plant at Auschitz during the time he was incarcerated in the camps. He writes lucidly about his time there. There are plenty of works by holocaust survivors, all of which are worthy and important testaments to what went on there, but these volumes are much more than that. They are exquisite pieces of writing in which Levi tries to understand what happened to him, why he survived and more importantly how he survived.
Much of his career as a writer was taken up with trying to understand and rationalise what went on during those years. The fact that he took his own life after writing his final attempt at this (The Drowned and the Saved) suggests that he wasn't entirely successful.
The burden of his need to understand weighs heavily upon him, but it is his analytical reading and clear eyed approach which makes his writing so remarkable. it is impossible to describe how profoundly moving these books are and how, even though he must have in some way found that they lacked whatever it is he was looking for in them.
If This Is A Man/ The Truce - Rated
This account of Primo Levi's time spent in Auschwitz is shattering, horrible and compelling. Although it is a cliche, it's a book that everyone should read to discover, not only the depths to which mankind can sink, but also the resilience that a man can muster, in the face of the most terrible odds. We may think we know about the Holocaust; well, perhaps we do not. Here one reads about the minutiae of the prisoners' lives - cheek by jowl with death, fear, hunger,dirt, loathing, brutality and being crushed, to become something other than a human being. In its graphic depiction of the worst in men, it is a record of the miraculous core of a man, that, somehow, remains intact.
Everyone should get this book on the nhs - Rated
The greatest, most humane piece of writing about the holocaust ever written. And one of the greatest books I've read. One of the few books that I return to time and time again. A harrowing story told with anger but without bitterness. A book about what it is to be human. Indispensable.
A Witness to Barbarism - Rated
I have meant to read this for a long time, and the wait was worth it. Levi - certainly in translation - writes the most beautiful, spare prose. Despite the grisly and appalling subject matter, what shines through is the humanity of not only the author but some of the other characters. 'If This Is A Man' was written within a couple of years of the author's return home to Italy, and this surely accounts for the clarity of recall and description. It is no surprise that Levi achieved 'legendary' status before his tragic death.
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