books @ cc.

by Primo Levi (1971)

Narrative is contained within another narrative in this novel, as Faussone, an exuberant rigger, tells his stories of working to a chemist-writer narrator (no doubt Levi’s alter ego):his constructions, an adventurous monkey, a machine that caught stardust, a name gone wrong, overcoming the fear of water, from India, Russia to Alaska.

by Primo Levi (1975)

Levi is a superb storyteller, with an ability (and delight, admitting himself as belonging to “that species of persons who do things in order to talk about them”) to turn words into engaging stories. The Periodic Table consists of twenty one short stories named after elements, arranged chronologically based on events in Levi’s life, with two short fictions, Lead and Mercury, inserted at the point they were written.

by Primo Levi (1971)
translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman

Written unplanned at different times and on different ocassions, Moments of Reprieve is a collection of fifteen short stories, each centred on one character only.