Penguin A Tranquil Star Levi Primo

Primo Levi's The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories that elegantly interlace the author's experiences in Fascist Italy, and later in Auschwitz, with his passion for scientific knowledge and discovery. This Penguin Modern Classics edition of is translated by Raymond Rosenthal with an essay on Primo Levi by Philip Roth • A chemist by training, Primo Levi became one of the supreme witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In these haunting reflections inspired by the elements of the periodic table, he ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and 'inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for twenty-two years - to life-giving carbon. 'Iron' honours the mountain-climbing resistance hero who put iron in Levi's student soul, 'Cerium' recalls the improvised cigarette lighters which saved his life in Auschwitz, while 'Vanadium' describes an eerie post-war correspondence with the man who had been his 'boss' there

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century: a man who survived one of the ugliest times in history, yet who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with an unaffected tenderness • Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, 'the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue'. Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the 'bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve'

Primo Levi was among the greatest witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi's characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside The Period Table and If This Is A Man as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of our times

Tristes Tropiques begins with the line 'I hate travelling and explorers', yet during his life Claude Levi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found 'human society reduced to its most basic expression'. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of 'primitive' man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact

Dark Star Safari is Paul Theroux's now classic account of a journey from Cairo to Cape Town • Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some of the most dangerous. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery -- of the unknown and the unexpected, but also of people and places he knew as a young and optimistic teacher forty years before • Safari in Swahili simply means "journey", and this is the ultimate safari. It is Theroux in his element -- a trip where chance encounter is everything, where departure and arrival times are an irrelevance, and where contentment can be found balancing on the top of a truck in the middle of nowhere

"Прекрасная звезда" - это повесть 1962 года о семье, любви, ядерной войне и НЛО, которую Юкио Мисима считал одной из своих лучших книг • Впервые переведенная на английский язык, эта атмосферная черная комедия рассказывает историю семьи Осуги, которые внезапно осознают, что каждый из них родом с другой планеты: отец с Марса, мать с Юпитера, сын с Меркурия и дочь с Венеры. Это внеземное знание сближает их и убеждает в том, что у них есть миссия: найти себе подобных и спасти человечество от неминуемой угрозы атомной бомбы • Книга на английском языке • Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books • Translated into English for the first time, this atmospheric black comedy tells the story of the Osugi family, who come to the sudden realization that each of them hails from a different planet: Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith • With warmth, tenderness and quiet wit, Oscar Wilde's fables and fairy tales have moved and delighted for generations. In far-off kingdoms and ocean realms, in the company of giants and nightingales, Wilde speaks of heartbreak and redemption, of cruelty and compassion, of love lost, of love gained, of love lasting. Included in this selection are stories from The Happy Prince and A House of Pomegranates

Primo Levi's account of life as a concentration camp prisoner falls into two parts. If This is a Man describes his deportation to Poland and the twenty months he spend working in Auschwitz. The Truce covers his long journey to Italy at the end of the war through Russia and Central Europe. Levi never raises his voice, complains or attributes blame. By telling his story quietly, objectively and in plain language he renders both the horror and the hope of the situation with absolute clarity. Probing the themes which preoccupy all his writing - work love, power, the nature of things, what it is to be human - he leaves the reader drained, elated, apprehensive

De Primo Levi, chacun connaît l’inoubliable récit qu’il écrivit à son retour d’Auschwitz. Des souvenirs du lager, il sera peu question ici, mais bien plutôt du jeune garçon qu’il était en y entrant. D’une enfance timide et bourgeoise, à Turin, de la chimie qui fut sa première passion (et son autre métier), des livres, de l’amitié, d’un parcours scolaire soumis aux lois fascistes, des premiers émois amoureux, de la montagne et du goût du risque – témoignage rare, précis et pudique de celui qui devint, malgré l’horreur et à travers elle, « un homme » • Cette conversation en forme de confession que Primo Levi entama avec Giovanni Tesio dans les semaines qui précédèrent sa disparition devait constituer le matériau de sa biographie autorisée. Une discussion à jamais interrompue

Quand Si c'est un homme paraît, en 1947, le livre passe inaperçu. Il faudra attendre plus de dix ans avant qu'une nouvelle édition révèle en Primo Levi non seulement un témoin qui aide comme aucun autre à comprendre l'univers concentrationnaire, mais un grand écrivain. Primo Levi, qui dit devoir à Auschwitz sa vocation littéraire, revint sans cesse sur ce qu'il avait écrit dans Si c'est un homme. Il se fit gardien de la mémoire, interlocuteur toujours prêt à éclairer notre vision des camps, du nazisme et de l'antisémitisme, et à alerter contre le retour de ce mal sous la même et sous d'autres formes • Dans ce recueil d'entretiens diffusés à la radio ou parus dans la presse écrite, il explore - avec son génie de la précision, sa capacité d'ironie et sa hauteur de vue - ces questions qui sont au coeur de son oeuvre

De 1943 à 1945, durant les deux dernières années de la guerre, une poignée d'hommes et de femmes ont traversé l'Europe, depuis la Biélorussie jusqu'à Milan. Pour fuir ? Non, pour se battre. Ces Juifs russes et polonais allaient, au péril de leur vie, dans la solitude infinie des marécages et des glaces, conquérir une dignité nouvelle. Derrière eux, ils laissaient les ghettos, le souvenir des anciens pogroms, de familles exterminées par les nazis • Devant les attendait la Palestine. Certes, il leur faudrait lutter encore pour devenir des citoyens à part entière. Mais c'était " maintenant ou jamais ". Ils l'avaient décidé, ce serait maintenant. Fondé sur des faits authentiques, ce livre, que Primo Levi considérait comme son premier roman, nous entraîne dans les coulisses de l'histoire officielle, à la rencontre de héros anonymes dont la foi souleva des montagnes

A new edition of Primo Levi’s classic memoir of the Holocaust, with an introduction by David Baddiel, author of Jews Don’t Count