SOURCE: Cooper, Elias. “The Eye of a Cyclone.” Nation 194 (2 June 1962): 499-500.

In the following review of The Linden Trees, Cooper praises Levi's poignant and insightful observations on post-World War II Germany.

The poet Umberto Saba has said, “After Maidenek all men have in some way been diminished. All of us—executioners and victims—are, and for many more centuries to come will be, much less than we were before.” In The Linden Trees, his narrative of travel in Germany, Carlo Levi agrees with that judgment, but postulates that “even at the extreme edge of the dehumanized a new human moment can come to birth.” It is for that “human moment” that Levi searched in Germany. He is not sure that the absurd violence of the past may not be “in some mysterious and necessary fashion also in ourselves.” The Germany of today represents to him the most important...