If you mean a book I read in the past 12 months, I recommend the double-novel, *If This is a Man* and *The Truce* by Primo Levi, published in a single volume by Abacus. You can also get *If This is a Man* by itself under the name of *Survival in Auschwitz* by a different publisher. The first book is about Levi's time in Auschwitz, and the second is about his two year journey back home to Italy.

I read these with some friends, and when I heard what we were going to be reading, I did not want to read about Auschwitz. However, Levi is an amazing writer, and there is a lot of beauty in his stories of the people he encountered.

Most people on Nostr are aware the growing corruption in the power structures of our world. Levi shows how people survived under Nazi cruelty in the first book, and the disorganized confusion of the Soviet liberators in the second book. Who knows what we may encounter as things deteriorate in our current situation, but it is helpful to see someone make it under much worse circumstances than what we are now enduring.

Levi was a Jewish Italian chemist, and although he was not religious, he does seem to have some sense of God's existence and provision, and he does have a good moral sense. Sadly, although Levi returned to a successful career as a chemist in Turin and added a successful writing career after retirement, he killed himself in his old age, so that left me and my friends wondering what continued to haunt him.

I know that the Christian knowledge of the love of God and the hope of eternal glory has sustained many believers in the sufferings of this life, so I pray that I will hold onto that if I have to suffer such hardships.