The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology. This item is unavailable.The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology

The Search for Roots is an anthology of writings that Primo Levi considered to be essential reading. Beginning with the Book of Job, that drama of the just oppressed by injustice, these thirty pieces, with introductions by Levi, reflect his profound knowledge of science and deep passion for literature, and his survival of Auschwitz, making it a collection that is both universal and poignantly autobiographical. The book demonstrates the breadth of Levi's interests and sympathies, from miniature science-fiction narratives to poetry and technical papers. The title suggests a rather strenuous endeavor, but everything here is marked by a quiet authority.

Born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, Primo Levi was the son of an educated middle-class Jewish family. He became a research chemist and in December 1943 was arrested as part of the anti-fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz. After the war, Levi resumed his career as a chemist, retiring only in 1975. His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, was published in 1957, and he went on to write many other books, including If Not Now, When? and The Periodic Table, emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust but also as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes. In 1987 he died in a fall that is widely believed to have been suicide.