Primo Levi
Se questo è un uomo

Discomfort, so much discomfort.

It couldn't be otherwise. Me, with an apple in one hand, sitting on the rocks, the Mediterranean stretching endlessly before me, a cluster of people on the nearby beach busy doing nothing, and "Se questo è un uomo" in the other hand. Me, in the perfect picture of my holiday life, and Primo Levi in his hell, not the Dantean one but the 20th-century one, the one that in Western culture has become the hell par excellence, the Nazi concentration camp.

The work throws us with extreme delicacy into the darkness of the human mind. The author takes us by the hand into the Monowitz concentration camp, near the Auschwitz complex. Primo Levi is a discreet Virgil, a mechanical and rational handycam that scans for posterity with absolute precision everything that remains of the so-called "human condition". He is a coroner engaged in a raw dissection of himself and his experience. The author tells us about the journey to the camp, the daily "routines" of the extermination camp, the infirmary, the labor, the hunger, the cold, the Nazis, the death. The prose is completely devoid of any hint of the writer's sentiment, there is absolutely no need for it. The words dig into our minds and souls until the pain, anger, and frustration of every deported person emerge. The moral judgments are entirely left in the hands of the reader; we will find no trace of them in the clear and fluid, simple and devastating reading. The bad guys aren't "bad"; they are just people following orders from above. Levi's "chemist" scientific culture prevails during the narration, the "Galilean experimental method" is the guiding star to follow to define a universally acceptable and shareable synthesis. The camp is a cruel and deadly experiment, insane and all-encompassing. "Se questo è un uomo" is a sharp slap in the face, the kind that hurts, the kind that will never be forgotten.

Sitting on the rocks, I lift my eyes from the darkness of the book and a painful glare blinds me completely. My sacrum hurts, but I pretend nothing is wrong. Is this THE pain? Come on, let's not joke. In my hand, the apple core remains. I make a gesture to toss it to the fish, but I stop. In my thoughts, there are people jostling for dirty water passed off as broth. In two bites, the core ends up in my stomach, followed closely by the stem. I feel ridiculous, very ridiculous. I return to the beach. "Love, everything okay? Have you finished the book? The kids are waiting for you, they want to go swimming." "Sure, let's go, little ones." If we can enjoy the swim, it's also thanks to books like this.

About a year ago, I finished reading it. I was afraid of forgetting it, of finding it lost in my oblivion, but it is still firmly anchored within me. I am a lucky man, very lucky.