Rome Book Club - Week 1 - The Thaw
First week of the latest Rome Book Club "Primo Levi’s The Truce: a guide to returning to life” led by Prof. Barry McCrea.
The Truce, written in 1962, takes up where If This is a Man left off, recounting Levi’s epic journey on trains, on foot, on horse-and-cart, as he makes his way across war-scarred Europe from liberated Auschwitz back to Turin. But is also a psychological journey from disenchantment to re-enchantment, from imprisonment to freedom, from the Nazi “cult of emptiness” to a celebration of human difference and vitality. The “Truce” of the title has several meanings: the literal end of the war, the strange in-between world after the horror has ended but ordinary life has yet begun, the temporary suspension of moral judgement required to move forward.