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The Search for Roots

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The Search for Roots
First edition
AuthorPrimo Levi
Original titleLa ricerca delle radici
TranslatorPeter Forbes
Cover artistM. C. Escher
Sphere Spirals, 1958[1]
LanguageItalian
PublisherEinaudi (Italian)
Allen Lane (English)
Publication date
1981
Publication placeItaly
Published in English
2001
Media typePrint (Paperback)
Pages234
ISBN1-56663-504-7
OCLC69243948

The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology is a compilation of thirty pieces of prose and poetry selected by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi as part of an abortive project by his original Italian publisher Einaudi to identify the texts which most influenced major Italian writers.

Contents

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  1. "The Just Man Oppressed by Injustice": "The Book of Job", The Bible
  2. "A Man of No Account": Homer, New Coasts and Poseidon's Son, The Odyssey
  3. "Why are Animals Beautiful?": Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
  4. "To See Atoms": Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things
  5. "The Pact with the Mammoths": Joseph-Henri Rosny, La Guerre du Feu
  6. "The Hobbies": Giuseppe Parini, "The Day"
  7. "A Deadly Nip": Carlo Porta, "Olter Desgrazzi de Giovannin Bongee"
  8. "Dystopia": Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
  9. "A Testing Time": Joseph Conrad, "Youth"
  10. "The Words of the Father": Ludwig Gattermann, Laboratory Methods of Organic Chemistry
  11. "Better to Write of Laughter Than Tears": François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
  12. "A Different Way of Saying 'I'": Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers#The Tales of Jacob
  13. "The Romance of Technology": Roger Vercel, Tug-Boat
  14. "The Dark Well of the Human Spirit": Herman Melville, Moby Dick
  15. "Survivors in the Sahara": Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
  16. "The Curious Merchant": Marco Polo, The Travels
  17. "The Poet-Researcher": Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe
  18. "The Jew on Horseback": Isaac Babel, Collected Stories
  19. "An Irrepressible Quibbler": Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories
  20. "Pity Hidden beneath Laughter": Giuseppe Belli, The Sonnets
  21. "Why We are Not Happy": Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
  22. "We are the Aliens": Fredric Brown, "Sentry"
  23. "The Measure of All Things": ASTM D 1382 - 55 T, American Society for Testing Materials
  24. "Urchin Death": Stefano D'Arrigo, Horcynus Orca
  25. "TV According to Leonardo": Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible
  26. "Before and after the Crime": T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
  27. "Death Fugue": Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan
  28. "Tonie the Winterer": Mario Rigoni Stern, The Story of Tönle
  29. "Trying to Understand": Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz
  30. "We are Alone": Kip S. Thorne, The Search for Black Holes

References

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