Norwegian

Cover of “Hvis dette er et menneske”, Document, 1990

If Not Now, When? / Besøkelsestid was the first of Primo Levi’s works to be translated into Norwegian. The international publisher Gyldendal printed it in 1987. Subsequently, only If This is a Man / Hvis dette er et menneske (1990) and The Truce / Våpenstillstanden (1992) have been published. Document put them out and Tommy Watz translated them.

Document is a little publisher recently founded and created by the young editor Hans Rustad "with the explicit goal of publishing the witnessing of Primo Levi about Auschwitz along with other documentary writings" [Klem in Tesio 2003 : 269]. Document’s editorial plans had included at least three more works of Levi’s. One of them was an anthology of the same selection of stories that had been translated into English in Moments of Reprieve. However, this book appears to be "not available" (Nådestunder) in various on-line bookstores.

In 1991 the editors at Document tried to get Primo Levi’s works acquired by the Norsk Kulturråd, the Norwegian state council that mandates funding for acquiring works of foreign literatures. It then distributes 500 copies of each work to public libraries. Nevertheless, the council rejected If This is a Man and The Truce, the only two published works of Levi’s in Norway, because "they could not be considered works of artistic value" given their value as documentary witnessing.