The Double Bond: Primo Levi, a Biography

An important writer to emerge from the death camps, Levi spent 65 of his 67 years in Turin, Italy, where he worked as a chemist by day & wrote at night in a study, his childhood bedroom. Thanks to memoirs–“Survival in Auschwitz”, “The Reawakening” & “The Periodic Table”–he became known as a moral man who’d transmuted the agonies of persecution into understanding. He died in 1987, apparently having thrown himself into the stairwell of the house in which he’d been born. Angier spent a decade writing this meticulously researched biography, which illuminates the design of his interior life: how he lived as a man divided, not only between chemistry & writing but between hope & despair, & how the duty to testify released him to communicate.
Angier’s biography of Jean Rhys (1990) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award & won the Writers’ Guild Award for Non-Fiction. She’s the Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick & lives in Oxfordshire.
“A vastly detailed & intricately layered biography…Meticulous & visionary…Angier’s critical appreciation is to my mind flawless.”–Richard Eder, NY Times Book Review
“Compelling & beautifully written…Ms Angier’s book is devoted to capturing the inner man as much as the outward circumstances of his life…Her detailed account of the ordeal in the camps is painstakingly presented & told with a respectful care.”–Erich Eichman, Wall Street
“Brilliantly unorthodox…Angier is Levi’s perfect biographer–a natural foil for his own reluctance to reveal his real self–& her work is the perfect complement to his, daring & justified in each of its own liberties…Her book is a remarkable success. Not only for its own achievement, but also because it restores to Levi’s life the dignity his death seemed to betray.”–Alex Abramovich”–Village Voice
“The Double Bond has the pace & grip of a thriller. I could hardly out it down from the start to finish. Primo Levi was a natural storyteller whose fearful experiences in Auschwitz & elsewhere made him a great writer, & one of the 20th century’s prime witnesses. It cost him all he had to give. Carole Angier explores the dark secrets of his life & work with humane & moving clarity. She uses the unknown & unknowable as key structural elements–like holes in lace–in a biographical design as rich, intricate & mysterious as the nature of the man it mirrors.”–Hilary Spurling, author of “The Unknown Matisse”
“Carole Angier has solved the almost intractable problems which Primo Levi sets the modern biographer, with penetrating & audacious ingenuity. Using his own literary methods & complementing them, with intelligence & imagination, she gives us new insight into his character. His great mission was to bear witness during the last half of the 20th century. Her inspired recreation of his life & work will assist him to continue doing so well into the present century. It is is a subtle & extraordinary achievement.”–Michael Holroyd, author of “Lytton Strachey”
“Angier’s life study succeeds because, beyond its diligence & probity, it is an exhaustive exercise of moral imagination. She openly subjects many of her own insights & conjectures to the question of how her subject might have reacted to them.”–Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
“Angier’s long, gripping narrative of Levi’s time in Auschwitz synthesizes the best of his memoirs, poetry, fiction, essays & scientific writing. She shows & tells that he was ‘not just a great witness but a great artist; & the 1st because the 2nd.’ Just as compelling is her discussion of the moral issues he raises about the ‘gray zone’ of human behavior, the shame of the drowned & the saved, the roles of victims, perpetrators & bystanders. A compelling biography & a must for all Holocaust collections.”–Booklist
List of Illustrations
Illustration Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Paradiso: Paradise Lost
Botticelli Angels: 1919-30: The Hare & the Tortoise
Primo Levi Primo: 1930-37: The Hare & the Tortoise II
Chemistry: 1937-41: Alberto
Nickel: 1941-42: Burning
Milan: 7/42-9/8/43: Gabriella
Amay & Aosta: 9/43-1/44
Fossoli: 2/44
Auschwitz: 2/22/44-1/27/45
The Truce: 1/27-10/19/45
Levi Uomo: 1945-47: Dancing
Levi Uomo II: 1948-63: Corso Re Umberto 75
Centaur: 1963-75: Lilith
Writer: 1975-85: The Double Bond
The Drowned & the Saved: 1986
The Double Bind: 1987
Notes
Bibliography
Index