A Man of Few Words

About the Book

‘Nobody knows how much I owe that man,’ Primo Levi said of the bricklayer who saved his life at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For six months, Lorenzo Perrone risked his own life to smuggle food, letters and clothing to prisoners. Without Perrone, Levi would not have survived the Holocaust – and the world would have been deprived of his writing.

In A Man of Few Words, Carlo Greppi pieces together the life of Perrone, a near-destitute labourer with little formal education. Despite their starkly different circumstances, Perrone and Levi forged a friendship that endured beyond the camp and until Perrone’s tragic death. Levi never forgot him, returning again and again to the memory of the man who had saved his life but left few traces of his own.

Compassionate, clear-eyed and deeply humane, Greppi’s account brings to light a universal story
of quiet courage – of one individual who kept hope alive in one of the darkest places and times
in human history.

About the Author

Carlo Greppi is an award-winning historian and author. He is the author of fourteen books, including Un uomo di poche parole (A Man of Few Words), which has been translated into six languages and sold more than 20,000 copies in Italy.

About the Translator

Howard Curtis is a British translator of French, Italian and Spanish fiction. He has translated the works of Gianrico Carofiglio, Luis Sepúlveda, Beppe Fenoglio and Georges Simenon, among others, and has won the John Florio Prize and the Premio Campiello Europa for his translations.

Reviews

‘Greppi’s biography of this elusive figure is intriguing … Greppi suggests that Perrone’s untutored altruism answers the deepest question of Levi’s oeuvre: what it means to be human. Because Perrone’s solidarity had neither motive nor reason. It was simply instinctive. And there’s something beautifully poetic in the fact that such instinct was revealed through a man who was so simple and so troubled.’
The Observer

‘Greppi’s biography, from start to finish a marvel of sympathetic insight, is a valuable addition to Levi’s writings on the human infamy that was Auschwitz.’
Times Literary Supplement

‘This is a great book: scrupulously researched and superbly written.’
Ian Thomson

‘A thoroughly moving read. Out of utter degradation, this inspiring story emerges to remind us that the spark of human decency can never be crushed.’
Julia Boyd

‘A story for all stories: Greppi has rescued it from oblivion .. Inch by inch, Lorenzo Perrone has taken a little bit of evil out of the world.’
Rolling Stone

‘Sheds light on an unsung hero … a fluent retelling.’
The Jewish Chronicle

‘Levi’s greatest piece of luck in Auschwitz was meeting Lorenzo, who kept him alive when he was hanging on to life by a thread.’
Literary Review

’Perrone, though an unreligious man, was something of a saint. This book is the commemoration he deserves.’
Times Literary Supplement