The Monkey’s Wrench
by Primo Levi
translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (July 1, 1995)

Narrative is contained within another narrative in this novel, as Faussone, an exuberant rigger, tells his stories of working to a chemist-writer narrator (no doubt Levi’s alter ego):his constructions, an adventurous monkey, a machine that caught stardust, a name gone wrong, overcoming the fear of water, from India, Russia to Alaska.

The narrator has warned at the beginning, that Faussone, garrulous as he is, is not a great story-teller: “On the contrary, he’s somewhat monotonous, playing things down, elliptical, as if he were afraid of seeming to exaggerate. But often he lets himself go, and then, unconsciously, he does exaggerate.” Certainly, the narration doesn’t flow as smoothly as Levi’s other works (some readers may find accounts on rigging and engineering boring), but it captures the interactions, the similarities and differences between the manual and intellectual labourers and their personalities in minute, engaging details and reflections.

By the same author:
The Periodic Table
Moments of Reprieve