La Tregua – Primo Levi

 

I’ve stolen this book from my granddad’s bookshelf. It was a gift for him by my mom some 20 years ago. His memory is really rather wobbly now, I don’t think he’ll realize it’s gone (or, sadly, that he’s ever read it).

I’ve read it because my mother – rightfully, as is sometimes the case! – scolded me for saying that often Levi’s writing is (understandably, obviously) quite humourless. I stand by what I said in relation to books about the holocaust. But La Tregua is more than that. It’s about the long journey home, about the light at the end of the tunnel, about the desire to live. Also, La Tregua was written in the early 1960s, 15 years after Se Questo E’ un Uomo, and I’m sure that this played an important role in the way in which Levi recalled his turbulent days in 1945 and 1946.

Levi’s self-mocking when describing his lack of street smarts is endearing, the plethora of secondary characters with very often stereotypical national quirks is extremely funny (at times actually hilarious), and the never-ending road back to Turin is of such an epic and heroic kind that I am sure McCarthy would love to have written La Tregua. And, clearly, the anecdotes that Levi magisterially recalls in La Tregua are of the kind which can only be lived and told by the chosen people.

The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad

I always thought my first Conrad book would have been Heart of Darkness – not sure whether it was because that’s the one my high-school teacher was always talking about or because I had my mind blown by Apocalypse Now when I was 14. Instead, I ended up reading this first because it was picked as one of the 103 (random number, I know) most significant books of the 20^th century by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica – a wonderful collection that no doubt inspired me to read more.

I assumed Conrad’s writing would be dated, but at the end of the day if Verne’s adventurous stories aren’t dated for young adults (and oh they aren’t), why should Conrad’s be for supposed-to-be real adults? The Shadow Line is still a surprisingly enjoyable book, with its journey of self-discovery not made any less interesting by the passing of time.