In 1981, noted author and Holocaust survivor Levi edited this anthology of 30 short excerpts from works that were especially important to him. They are basically arranged in the order he read them himself and point to four main themes, delineated in the preface: salvation through laughter, our unjust suffering, our stature as human beings, and salvation through knowledge. These four aspects of Levi's reading possessed him both as a writer and as a man. The book covers such major writers as Homer, Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, T.S. Eliot, and Thomas Mann. Science writing (e.g., Charles Darwin, Arthur C. Clarke, Ludwig Gattermann) and Jewish life in 20th-century Europe (Levi's great subject, represented by writers like Isaac Babel and Sholem Aleichem) are also represented. Especially noteworthy are the excerpts from lesser-known Italian writers (e.g., Carlo Porta, Giuseppe Parini). Not only are the selections themselves illuminating but Levi's preface and notes are invaluable additions to the writings of this author of reason, morality, and honesty. The introduction by Forbes, the editor of Poetry Review, and afterword by Italo Calvino further explain the anthology.

Levi, who committed suicide in 1987, said that he felt more naked and exposed to the public in making the choices for this "personal anthology" of his favorite reading than in writing his own books, including his memoirs of surviving Auschwitz. Lifelong readers will recognize Levi's passion to share what he's read, the favorite books he keeps on the same shelf, all profusely underlined, and his discovery that his deeper and more lasting loves are the hardest to explain.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/834919.htm...

A series of extracts ranging from one page to six of thirty favourite pieces of reading. I only knew four of them (The Book of Job, Gulliver's Travels, Moby-Dick and Murder in the Cathedral) and some of the others I think lose rather in translation (the Italian vernacular poetry of Giuseppe Belli) but there were a few pieces here from authors I would like to follow up for myself some time (Thomas Mann, Rabelais). ( )

Peter Walker, Financial Times, July 7/July 8 2001: 'This book is a fascinating journey...the reader feels he is observing nothing less than the construction, at times dangerous, careful and uncertain, of a creative consciousness'

Ronald Hayman, Daily Telegraph, 23 June 2001: 'Levi's search for roots is a rediscovery of printed words that helped to form him...most of the extracts seem either to prefigure the Holocaust or to look back on it'