One of the books I’ve read to distract myself
as I was writing my Ph.D. thesis on Italian Fascism while still feeling like I
was doing some academic work (I might have even thrown a couple of cheeky
references to this collection of short stories for good measure).
Having only read works by Levi that had been
marked by the Holocaust, it was rather refreshing to read stories about Levi’s
life before WWII, finding even a trace of humour every now and then – something
so sadly absent in most of his books.
I am not a fan of short stories, I never have enough
time to be drawn into them, and I am by no means a scientist (like Levi was,
and he titled every short story in this collection with the name of an element
on the periodic table) so I think I missed a number of the book’s subtleties.
Still, I liked it nonetheless.
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