Primo Levi (1919-1987) was born and lived his entire life in or near Turin, with the exception of the years 1944-45, when he was captured as an anti-fascist partisan, deported to Auschwitz, and then released into war-torn Europe. After liberation, with 'a torrent of things to tell the civilised world' and 'the tattooed number on [his] arm burning like a sore' he wrote a series of remarkable books, including If This is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Drowned and the Saved. He is now viewed as not only one of the key literary figures of the twentieth century and one of the most important survivor-writers of the Holocaust... for many he is an ethical writer of great depth and even a subtle and humane 'political philosopher'.
This is from the website for a Primo Levi conference to be held at Edge Hill University on 6-7 July 2012. For further details, and a call for proposed papers and conference panels, see here.