A Man of Few Words

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‘Nobody knows how much I owe that man,’ Primo Levi said of the bricklayer who saved his life at Auschwitz. ‘I could never repay him.’

Levi was referring to Lorenzo Perrone, who for six months risked his own life to smuggle food, clothing and letters to Levi and other prisoners. Without Perrone, Levi could not have survived to write ‘

If This Is a Man, one of the most influential memoirs by a Holocaust survivor.

In A Man of Few Words, Carlo Greppi pieces together the life of Perrone, a near-destitute labourer with little formal education, who left almost no trace of his own. Despite their differences, Levi and Perrone's friendship endured long after the war, even as Perrone withdrew from the world. Levi never stopped trying to preserve the memory of his friend who has saved his life.

Compassionate, clear-eyed and deeply humane, this is the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary courage kept hope alive in one of history’s darkest places.