Other People's Trades

Saul Bellow once said, "In Levi's writing, nothing is superfluous and everything is essential, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the deft and elegant essays of Other People's Trades. For these provocative forays into the worlds of zoology, literature, astronomy, and linguistics confirm the gift of an unusually thoughtful and perceptive writer who himself characterized this work as the result of his "roaming about as a curious dilettante for more than a decade".Here is the Primo Levi of The Periodic Table and The Monkey's Wrench - witty, charming, erudite, always lucid, and supremely graceful - on the varied subjects that fascinated him: the house that he lived in all of his life and galaxies unimaginably remote; butterflies, beetles, and fleas; children's imaginary monsters and their nonverbal civilization of play; the mysteries of fire and electricity and the delightful challenges of returning to school at the age of sixty; his reflections on the lessons of life learned as a chemist and the pleasures of the mind. We are treated to autobiographical glimpses of Levi's childhood summers, his grandparents, and unrequited first love.Throughout Levi probes to find the link between the worlds of nature and civilization, and to bring together the scientific and literary cultures. A vivid portrait of a warm and humorous man, Other People's Trades is further proof that Primo Levi is "one of the most important and gifted writers of our time" [Italo Calvino].Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919 and was trained as a chemist. Arrested as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance, he was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Levi's experience in the death camp and his subsequent travels through Eastern Europe were the subject of his two classic memoirs, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening, as well as the source of a collection of portraits, Moments of Reprieve. Dr. Levi retired from his position as manager of a Turin chemical factory in 1977 to devote himself full-time to writing and was also the author of The Periodic Table; If Not Now, When?; The Monkey's Wrench; and The Drowned and the Saved. He died in Turin in April 1987.