The Albanian edition of Primo Levi’s book The Drowned and the Saved, translated by Aida Baro and published by Dukagjini, with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Kosovan Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, will soon be available for the first time in bookshops in Kosovo and Albania.
The book will be presented on Wednesday 7 February in Pristina (Dukagjini Bookstore, 6:00 p.m.) and Thursday 8 February in Tirana (Sotir Kolea Centre – National Library, 6:00 p.m.), just a few days after Remembrance Day. Professor Fabio Levi, honorary professor of contemporary history at the University of Turin and President of the International Primo Levi Studies Center, has been invited from Italy for the occasion. He will give a lecture dedicated to the author’s text and will dialogue with the translator and the audience.
“This essay is indispensable for understanding the 20th century and reconstructing the anthropology of contemporary man. For this reason, we are extremely proud that both the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kosovan Ministry of Culture chose to support this first edition in Albanian, backing the efforts of the Kosovan publisher Dukagjini”, said the Ambassador of Italy in Pristina Antonello De Riu and the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Tirana Alessandro Ruggera.
With The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi (1919-1987) rounded off, forty years after If This is a Man, the testimony and reflections that animated his first book, centred on his memories of Auschwitz and his efforts to understand the mind of his torturers. The book, which took ten years to write, was published by Einaudi in the spring of 1986: quickly translated throughout the world, it is recognised as a brilliant work on the nature of evil and the nature of man.
