Arduous Tasks: Primo Levi, Translation and the Transmission of Holocaust Testimony

‘Insana’s book provides a brilliant and exceptionally well-researched set of case studies that take up Levi’s preoccupation with translation throughout the arc of his career as a writer and his concern that, as a translator, he was making himself and the world more vulnerable to further violence.’ Michael Bernard-Donals: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol 25:01:2011

‘The book is well argued and offers new perspectives on Levi’s literary writing as a survivor of and witness of the Holocaust… Arduous Task provides translators and scholars of translation studies alike with novel insights in the two-way transformation that takes place any time interpretation of the other is complicated by experiential or textual traumas.’ Valerio Ferme, Italian Culture - vol 32:01:2014

'Arduous Tasks offers a compelling and forensically argued analysis of a fascinating, largely neglected corner of Primo Levi's work, that of translation. Intellectually ambitious and stimulating, Lina N. Insana's study draws on insights from translation theory to read Levi's multiple practices of translation, opening out into a wide-ranging exploration of Holocaust interpretation and the nature of testimony.' Robert S.C. Gordon, Cambridge University