THE LETTERS

ABOUT LEVINET

In November 1986, Primo Levi participated in a conference organized by ANED in Turin, at Palazzo Lascaris; it was one of his last public appearances. On that occasion, he had two printed documents distributed among the audience. One was the chapter “Letters from Germans” from his book I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved), which had been published a few months earlier. In his speech, with regard to this “uninterrupted dialogue” with his readers and the questions they asked him, he wrote:

“other, I believe more interesting answers are the outcome of an intricate network of correspondence that for many years put me in contact with the German readers of If This Is a Man.”