The Truce
First edition
|
|
| Author | Primo Levi |
|---|---|
| Original title | La tregua |
| Translator | Stuart Woolf |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Publisher |
Einaudi (Italian) The Bodley Head (English) |
|
Publication date
|
1963 |
|
Published in English
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1965 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) and (Paperback) |
| Pages | 253 (1st edition Italian) 222 (1st edition English) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 17221240 |
The Truce (Italian: La tregua) is a book by the Italian author Primo Levi. It is the sequel to If This Is a Man and describes the author's experiences from the liberation of Auschwitz (Monowitz), which was a concentration camp, until he reaches home in Turin, Italy, after a long-winded journey. He describes the situation in different displaced persons camps after the Second World War. The Truce, the literal translation of the title, is the name of the translation published in Britain; the US title is The Reawakening.
The historian Fritz Stern, in a brief review on Foreign Affairs, wrote that The Reawakening "charts Levi's incredibly circular return to Italy via Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Here people and landscapes come vividly alive in a bizarre, often comical series of events and human encounters; a truly remarkable tale."
Levi himself reminisces a bit about a character in the book in his The Paris Review interview: "Have you read my book The Reawakening? You remember Mordo Nahum? I had mixed feelings toward him. I admired him as a man fit for every situation. But of course he was very cruel to me. He despised me because I was not able to manage. I had no shoes. He told me, Remember, when there is war, the first thing is shoes, and second is eating. Because if you have shoes, then you can run and steal. But you must have shoes. Yes, I told him, well you are right, but there is not war any more. And he told me, Guerra es siempre. There is always war."
The book starts with the departure of the Germans from the camp. The sick Häftlinge were left on their own after the healthy ones were taken on a death march away from the approaching Red Army. As all the services have left the camp exploration journeys begin in search for food and essential items.
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