Svegliarsi adulti. Vita di Sandro Delmastro, partigiano e amico di Primo Levi

Who was Sandro Delmastro? Certainly a close friend of Primo Levi. But also a partisan leader, killed by the Fascists. And then, a mountaineer. But Sandro is also and above all remembered by readers as the unforgettable protagonist of the story “Ferro” in Levi’s The Periodic Table. So who was the real person behind the character? Archive documents, letters, photographs and unpublished writings reveal the portrait of an extraordinary and elusive young man. A naval officer and mountain enthusiast, intellectual and man of action, after 8 September 1943 Delmastro was one of the leaders of the Resistance in Turin. If in The Periodic Table Primo Levi had taken a real person and given him literary dignity, here the literary character is brought back to reality. This oscillation between the literary Sandro and the real Sandro gives his story an astonishing three-dimensionality, leading the reader to think that such a perfect balance between fiction and reality is the only possible form for a biography.