Primo Levi wrote books that have been called "the essential works of humankind, " including Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table. Yet he lived an unremarkable existence, remaining to his death in the house in which he'd been born, managing a paint and varnish factory for thirty years, and tending his invalid mother to the end. Now, in a matchless account, Ian Thomson unravels the strands of an influential life.