Books: Torments of a guide to Hell; THE DOUBLE BOND: PRIMO LEVI, A BIOGRAPHY Carole Angier Viking, pounds 25, 898pp; PRIMO LEVI Ian Thomson Hutchinson, pounds 25, 553pp; Out of Auschwitz came a unique voice of witness. Lesley Chamberlain assesses two heroic efforts to make sense of the troubled man behind it.(Features) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: March 23, 2002| Author: Chamberlain, Lesley | COPYRIGHT 2002 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Primo Levi was an assimilated Jew from Turin and a qualified chemist. He joined the Partisans when the Germans invaded Mussolini's collapsed Italy, and was arrested and deported, aged 24, to Auschwitz in winter 1944. Through luck, cunning, his chemist's training and the charity of others, he survived a year in the Inferno. Months of being shunted about Eastern Europe followed the Russians' freeing of the camp, and Levi did not arrive home in Turin until October 1945.

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