If This Is A Man

If This Is A Man is quite simply the best book I have ever read. Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who was captured by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. This beautifully written book details his time spent in the camp, and the struggle for survival in the most degrading of circumstances. Despite the depravity of his ordeal, Levi is never bitter or consumed with hatred and he gives an objective description of the gradual erosion of what makes us human. The concentration camps of the Second World War were an extreme example of man’s inhumanity to man, and this book is one that should be read so that we do not forget what we are capable of.