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House of Primo Levi
“Nothing belongs to us anymore: they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, and even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and even if they did listen to us, they would not understand us. They will take away even our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find within ourselves the strength necessary so that behind this name, something of us, of what we were, remains.”
Primo Levi
Primo Levi’s house: a protective case
“I live in my house as I live in my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more picturesque skins: but it would seem little to change them for mine”, Primo Levi relates in his novel The Trades of Others.
This house in Turin was his childhood home until his death. A protective case in his sedentary life. A place of memory where he puts on paper the worst of the horrors of men made to men: the Shoah and the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime.
If This Is a Man was published the same year as The Diary of Anne Frank, in 1947. Two important historical testimonies. The first describes with precision the concentration camp universe of Auschwitz, while the second details the daily life of a young teenager hidden to escape the raids.
Cult! novels : 100 mythical places of novels (French Edition)
Want to know more about this place and its link with If this is a man? Find the complete story and 99 others in Cult! novels.
Primo Levi was designated by the number 174 517 in the concentration camp and not by his surname like all the prisoners.
Primo Levi’s house, a place of life, a place of death
Psychologically very affected and having developed a colon cancer, Primo Levi is not doing well anymore. On April 11, 1987, he leaves his apartment and voluntarily throws himself over the railing to land three floors below on the mosaic tiles of the entrance of his building. A residence where he lived all his life, his place of refuge.
Corso Re Umberto
In the middle-class district of Crocetta in Turin stands the red-brick building with the grey façade where Primo Levi lived all his life, from his birth to his death.
The novelist and his family lived in this street lined with horse chestnut trees. In this early 20th century building, the entire third floor was inhabited by the Levi family, Sephardic Jews from the middle class. Not far away, 30 minutes to the north-east, in Settimo Torinese, is the SIVA varnish factory where the novelist worked as a chemist. Today it is a cultural centre and a museum of memory where it is possible to visit Primo Levi’s office.
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Cult! novels : 100 mythical places of novels (French Edition)
Cult! Novels tells you the secrets of the places that made the history of literature.
Discover the history of Harry Potter’s house, the park that inspired the Lord of the Rings, Dracula’s castle and many other mythical places in literature in a new book.
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By Damien Canteau
Passionné par l'Histoire, les animés, les Arts et la bande dessinée en particulier, Damien est le rédacteur en chef du site spécialisé dans le 9e art, Comixtrip.