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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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