732. If Not Now, When?

If Not Now, When?
Primo Levi
1982
Around 330 pages

When it comes to Primo Levi novels, "enjoyable" is certainly not the word to describe the reading experience. This novel did not feel as raw and gut-wrenching as If This is a Man. This felt more like wish fulfillment, in a way.

In real life, Levi joined a group of unexperienced resistance fighters in Italy and was almost immediately captured and sent to Auschwitz. So in Auschwitz, he probably spent much of time reflecting on what could have been and fantasizing about being a heroic soldier, instead of an emaciated prisoner in hell. Our main character Mendel was a watch repairer before joining the Red Army. He loses his wife and shtetl to the Germans, and falls in with a group of Jewish resistance fighters.

So this is a book that Levi needed to write, but naturally it's not going to be as powerful as reading about his firsthand experiences in a death camp. But everything this man writes is worth a read. Now that he has gotten this out of his system, I'm very curious where he will go from here with his next novel.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

The title is taken from a well-known rabbinical saying attributed to Hillel the Elder: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?"

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