Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony, Syracuse University Press, 2008, by Sergio Parussa is a highly personal study of four major Italian Jewish writers: Umberto Saba, Natalia Ginzburg, Giorgio Bassani, and Primo Levi. The book examines in detail the different ways in which each author's work responds to Judaism and the notion of Jewish identity.

Parussa invites the reader to consider the writer as a witness who salvages the past from silence and oblivion, defining memory as essential for our relationship to both present and future.

Though an academic work with a strong theoretical framework, Parussa's book is written with great clarity and passion. This is a highly successful attempt to appeal to a wider non-specialized audience. The book is situated in the fertile territory between cultural history and literary criticism. Continue.

This interview opens a series of articles dedicated to the topic of memory, which will be published on the CPL website during the months of January and February.