Levi Beyond Levi: Creative Engagements with Primo Levi

What do Primo Levi’s works tell us about our world? How can they help us to think about today’s global challenges? Levi Beyond Levi invites readers to rediscover Primo Levi as a thinker whose ideas continue to resonate far beyond the historical conditions in which they were written. Emphasising reading as a dialogic and creative practice, the volume shows how Levi’s reflections on violence, memory, ethics, science, and political responsibility speak directly to the world we inhabit today.

Rather than treating Levi’s work as something fixed in the past, the contributors explore how his writings travel across time and culture, opening new perspectives on urgent issues such as rising authoritarianism, the ecological crisis, and the genocide in Palestine. They highlight how contemporary writers, artists, and theorists have drawn creatively on Levi’s insights, expanding and reimagining his questions for the twenty-first century.

Through innovative and thought-provoking essays, Levi Beyond Levi positions Levi as a companion for thinking through moral and political challenges that remain unresolved. The volume invites readers to consider Levi not only as a survivor and witness, but also as a classic whose works continue to generate meaning, spark debate, and offer tools for navigating our ‘moment of danger’.

Stefano Bellin is tenure-track Professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is currently completing a monograph entitled The Shame of Being Human: A Philosophical Reading of Primo Levi.

Simone Ghelli is senior post-doc researcher in contemporary Italian literature at the University of Ferrara (Italy). He is the author of The Suffering Animal. Life Between Weakness and Power (Palgrave 2023), and La vita è ingiusta. Il doloroso darwinismo di Primo Levi (IISF Press 2023).