Polish

Cover of “Czy to jest czlowiek”, Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1996

Four complete books by Primo Levi have been published in Poland - If This is a Man, The Drowned and the Saved, Conversations with Primo Levi (by Ferdinando Camon) and a collection of 20 stories from Storie naturali and Vizio di forma. The title of the collection, Excellent is the Water / Najlepsza jest woda, comes from the title of one of the stories. Excerpts from The Truce as well as the short story, "Some Applications of the Mimer," were published in journals in 1963 and 1977, respectively. If This is a Man / Czy to jest człowiek, was the first book to be published in 1978. Other selections from books and short stories appeared in various journals and periodicals, including an excerpt from The Drowned and the Saved in 2005 that paved the way for the publication of the entire text a few months later. The 1978 translation of If This is a Man had an initial press run of 3,000 copies and was not reprinted. In contrast, the anthology of stories met with an immediate success, selling 20,000 copies within a few months. If This is a Man / Czy to jest człowiek was republished by Ksiazka i Wiedza and the Auschwitz Museum with a preface by Israel Gutman in 1996. The museum and Brzezinka also jointly published a translation of Conversations with Primo Levi by Ferdinando Camon.