Perhaps the most devastating aspect of Levi’s suicide was its unexpectedness. Even among his closest friends, few were aware of his despair. “He was a happy man, allegro,” says the eminent political scientist Noberto Bobbio, who had known Levi for decades. “Three days before his death, he was tranquil and serene.” Roth, who visited him in Turin seven months before his death, insisted that “he was as filled with a sense of joy and well-being as a man can be.”
“Every suicide,” wrote Primo Levi, provokes “a nebula of explanations.” Even, it turns out, his own. In The Survivor’s Suicide, James Atlas searches for clarity and answers in the tragic and mystifying death of Survival in Auschwitz author Primo Levi, who fell from a third-floor apartment landing in April 1987, more than 42 years after the Holocaust about which he famously wrote.
The Survivor’s Suicide was originally published in Vanity Fair, January 1988.
Cover design by Adil Dara.
“Every suicide,” wrote Primo Levi, provokes “a nebula of explanations.” Even, it turns out, his own. In The Survivor’s Suicide, James Atlas searches for clarity and answers in the tragic and mystifying death of Survival in Auschwitz author Primo Levi, who fell from a third-floor apartment landing in April 1987, more than 42 years after the Holocaust about which he famously wrote.
The Survivor’s Suicide was originally published in Vanity Fair, January 1988.
Cover design by Adil Dara.
