Spring/Summer 2009 - University of Toronto Press Publishing
Spring/Summer 2009 - University of Toronto Press Publishing
Spring/Summer 2009 - University of Toronto Press Publishing
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i ta l i a n s t u d i e s<br />
Arduous Tasks<br />
Primo Levi, Translation, and the Transmission <strong>of</strong><br />
Holocaust Testimony<br />
Lina N. Insana<br />
<strong>Toronto</strong> italian studies<br />
One <strong>of</strong> twentieth-century Italy’s greatest thinkers,<br />
Primo Levi (1919–1987) started reflecting on the<br />
Holocaust almost immediately after his return<br />
home from the year he survived in Auschwitz. Levi’s<br />
powerful Holocaust testimonials reveal his preoccupation<br />
with processes <strong>of</strong> translation, in the form<br />
<strong>of</strong> both embedded and book-length renderings <strong>of</strong><br />
texts relevant to Holocaust survival. In Arduous<br />
Tasks, Lina N. Insana demonstrates how tranlsation<br />
functions as a metaphor for the transmission <strong>of</strong><br />
Holocaust testimony and broadens the parameters<br />
<strong>of</strong> survivor testimony.<br />
The first book to study Levi and translation,<br />
Arduous Tasks overcomes the conventional views <strong>of</strong><br />
the separation between his own personal memoirs<br />
and his translations by stressing the centrality <strong>of</strong><br />
translation in Levi’s entire corpus. Examining not<br />
only the testimonial nature <strong>of</strong> his work, Insana<br />
also discusses the transgressive and performative<br />
aspects <strong>of</strong> transmission in his writings. Winner <strong>of</strong><br />
the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award<br />
for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies from<br />
the Modern Language Association, Arduous Tasks is<br />
a superb and innovative study on the importance <strong>of</strong><br />
translation not only to Levi, but also to Holocaust<br />
studies in general.<br />
Lina N. Insana is an assistant pr<strong>of</strong>essor in the<br />
Department <strong>of</strong> French and Italian at the <strong>University</strong><br />
<strong>of</strong> Pittsburgh.<br />
Approx. 352 pp / 6 x 9 / May <strong>2009</strong><br />
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8020-9863-4 £48.00 $75.00 E<br />
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