The Search for Roots

The Search for Roots

First edition
Author	Primo Levi
Original title	La ricerca delle radici
Translator	Peter Forbes
Cover artist	M. C. Escher Sphere Spirals, 1958
Language	Italian
Publisher	Einaudi (Italian) Allen Lane (English)
Publication date	1981
Publication place	Italy
Published in English	2001
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	234
ISBN	1-56663-504-7
OCLC	69243948

The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology is a compilation of thirty pieces of prose and poetry selected by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi as part of an abortive project by his original Italian publisher Einaudi to identify the texts which most influenced major Italian writers.

Contents

1. "The Just Man Oppressed by Injustice": "The Book of Job", The Bible
2. "A Man of No Account": Homer, New Coasts and Poseidon's Son, The Odyssey
3. "Why are Animals Beautiful?": Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
4. "To See Atoms": Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things
5. "The Pact with the Mammoths": Joseph-Henri Rosny, La Guerre du Feu
6. "The Hobbies": Giuseppe Parini, "The Day"
7. "A Deadly Nip": Carlo Porta, "Olter Desgrazzi de Giovannin Bongee"
8. "Dystopia": Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
9. "A Testing Time": Joseph Conrad, "Youth"
10. "The Words of the Father": Ludwig Gattermann, Laboratory Methods of Organic Chemistry
11. "Better to Write of Laughter Than Tears": François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
12. "A Different Way of Saying 'I'": Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers#The Tales of Jacob
13. "The Romance of Technology": Roger Vercel, Tug-Boat
14. "The Dark Well of the Human Spirit": Herman Melville, Moby Dick
15. "Survivors in the Sahara": Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
16. "The Curious Merchant": Marco Polo, The Travels
17. "The Poet-Researcher": Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe
18. "The Jew on Horseback": Isaac Babel, Collected Stories
19. "An Irrepressible Quibbler": Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories
20. "Pity Hidden beneath Laughter": Giuseppe Belli, The Sonnets
21. "Why We are Not Happy": Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
22. "We are the Aliens": Fredric Brown, "Sentry"
23. "The Measure of All Things": ASTM D 1382 - 55 T, American Society for Testing Materials
24. "Urchin Death": Stefano D'Arrigo, Horcynus Orca
25. "TV According to Leonardo": Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible
26. "Before and after the Crime": T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
27. "Death Fugue": Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan
28. "Tonie the Winterer": Mario Rigoni Stern, The Story of Tönle
29. "Trying to Understand": Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz
30. "We are Alone": Kip S. Thorne, The Search for Black Holes

• "Afterword": The Four Paths of Primo Levi by Italo Calvino