IKIWA HUYO NI MTU

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi is one of the most widely read and well-known works on the tragedy of Nazi deportation and extermination during World War II.
As time has gone by, the work has become a classic of contemporary literature in its own right, crossing languages and borders. Travelling from English to German - the language of the perpetrators themselves - and then gradually reaching the main national languages of the major European countries, the book has spread to America, Australia, Asia and has recently opened up to the Middle East with its first translation into Arabic. 

Today, If This Is a Man is available in almost fifty different languages, so that the story of a fundamental turning point in 20th-century history has become accessible to an ever-wider audience. The memorable pages of an extraordinary author such as Primo Levi are still able to speak, today, to people of different origins and cultures.

Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, it has become crucial to extend Levi's voice to a significant part of the African continent, which is now increasingly prominent on the global cultural scene.
With this in mind, the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi ,thanks to the availability of Einaudi publishers in collaboration with Silvio Zamorani publishers and with the contribution of the Committee for the Celebration of the Centenary of Primo Levi’s Birth, promoted the translation of If This Is a Man into Swahili.

Thus, Swahili, lingua franca of communication in much of East, Central, and Southern Africa, becomes a tool for memory and cultural intersection: a way for Levi's words to continue to resonate in the present time, even in new linguistic geographies, spreading their message about human dignity and vulnerability.

The text can be downloaded from the website by clicking below: