Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from thetwentieth century: a man who survived one of the ugliest times in history,yet who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with anunaffected tenderness. Levi was a master storyteller but he did not writefairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood outagainst the tragic background of Auschwitz, 'the ones in whom I hadrecognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue'.Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick,a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the 'bizarre, marginalmoments of reprieve'.