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by Primo Levi

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.

A collection of insightful and understated autobiographical short stories named after elements by Primo Levi.

by Primo Levi (1971)

A collection of fifteen short stories, each centred on one character only. As overused it is for lame backcover reviews and acclaim, the phrase “superb storyteller” (and he, to some degrees, knows what a good story-telling is) is fully justified in the case of Levi: concise, analytical (but never dry) descriptions of details told in almost a sense of wonder, an appreciation, but never paraded in flamboyance.