Sergio Luzzatto
Partigia (Primo Levi’s Resistance)
An essay, Mondadori, April 2013, 376 pages

“Levi’s ‘ugly wartime secret’ uncovered.”
The Times

“A wide range and source-oriented study on Levi’s secret.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung

Primo Levi was a tireless writer, but he never told the story of his unfortunate experience as a young partisan in any detail. In fact, he has shrouded in silence the account of the weeks he’d spent as a rebel in the Val d’Aosta during the autumn of 1943, before being deported to Auschwitz. He only refers in passing to what he called an “ugly secret”.

From the reconstruction of a violent episode in the brief adventure of Levi the partisan, Sergio Luzzatto tells a story of resistance as a new way of reconstructing the story of the Resistance. With painstaking research and an intense narrative urge, the historian traces the formation of a band of partisans and the reprisal of the Salo forces after the armistice of September 8, 1943. In doing so, he sheds light on the dilemma that the young men of that time had to face, their passions and the reasons compelling them to rebel against the Fascists. He also raises the question of legitimacy and morality with respect to violence.
Luzzatto attempts to present true characters, not the saints of the Resistance or the monsters of Salo. In particular, he covers the exemplary actions of Edilio Cagni, a Nazi-fascist spy who had betrayed Levi’s group before himself becoming, after the Liberation, a spy for the Americans. But the renegade Cagni is only one of the many forgotten characters in the official history who we encounter in reading Partigia.
Another forgotten character, in his own way, is Primo Levi. This is because in Luzzatto’s book we discover a different Levi from the “authorized” Levi of the current biographies. We find a sorrowful Levi, who, before becoming a witness of the Final Solution of the Jewish problem, had been a witness to the harsher aspects of a civil war. 

Sergio Luzzatto

Sergio Luzzatto

Sergio Luzzatto teaches Modern History at the University of Turin. He is the author of Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age (Metropolitan Books, 2010), which won the prestigious Cundill Prize in History; of The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini’s Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2005), and of Primo Levi’s Resistance. Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2016), published in France by Gallimard (Partigia, 2016) and in Spain by Debate (Partisanos, 2015).

 

 

 

“Levi’s ‘ugly wartime secret’ uncovered.”
The Times

“A wide range and source-oriented study on Levi’s secret.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung

“An amazing book.”
Corriere della Sera

“There are books destined to become a watershed in the history of a country. Partigia by Sergio Luzzatto is one of these.”
il Giornale 

“A rich reconstruction which collects main and minor characters, fascists and anti-fascists, with an accurate archival research and fieldwork.”
La Stampa

“Archival investigations, philological reading of the documents, detailed bibliographic examinations… The Partisan Resistance in its real authenticity remains the foundation moment of liberated Italy.”
Il Sole 24 Ore

“Very well documented pages.”
la Repubblica

“A great history book, for the methodology, the use of sources, the arguments, and also an engaging writing.”
il Mulino

“Primo Levi’s Resistance provides the most in-depth account of the most formative experience of Levi’s outside of Auschwitz, and reveals a side of Levi we’re not used to seeing—a man implicated in a most pointless killing.”
New Republic

“Combining investigative flair with profound empathy, Primo Levi’s Resistance offers startling insight into the origins of the moral complexity that runs through the work of Primo Levi himself.”
The History Reader

“Written with wit and flair, Primo Levi’s Resistance enters the deep recesses of the partisans’ minds, examining their innermost thoughts and motives and praising their profoundly dedicated spirits while at the same time exposing their moral flaws. Luzzatto’s ability to both empathize with the partisans and still remain dispassionate demonstrates his powerful grasp of journalistic techniques and his highly developed storytelling skills.”
Jewish Book Council

Foreign rights sold in
France: Gallimard
Spain and Latin America: Debate
USA and UK: Metropolitan Books

Italian and international editions

Foreign publishers of Sergio Luzzatto’s works
France: Gallimard
Spain and Latin America: Debate
US: Metropolitan Books, Picador

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