Weightless | Primo Levi | Granta Magazine

Weightless

Primo Levi

Translated by Piers Spence

‘What I would like to experience most of all would be to find myself freed, even if only for a moment, from the weight of my body.’ Primo Levi on floating.

Primo Levi

Primo Levi (1919–1987) was an Italian writer and chemist. In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz, an experience he addressed in the memoir If This Is a Man and the essay collection The Drowned and the Saved, as well as in other works. His story collection The Periodic Table was named by the Royal Institution of Great Britain as the best science book ever.

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Translated by Piers Spence

Piers Spence is a translator of German. His works of translation include Georgio Pressburger’s The Law of White Spaces, and Hans Magnus Ezenberger’s Civil Wars.

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