It is not a novel, but an essay written by Levi to complement a volume of black and white photographs, by János Reismann. The title, Un volto che ci somiglia, has been translated into German and published in 1959 by Belser, an editor of Stuttgart. The following year it was published in Italy by Giulio Einaudi under the title Un volto che ci somiglia: ritratto dell’Italia. The book contains photographs of well-known monuments of our country, marinas, hilltop villages, working-class districts of large cities such as Naples and Rome, as well as the faces of farmers, fishermen and children living around the monuments of the past. Accompanying these images we find Levi’s analysis of a rural and urban Italy that lives its time by making “…the past alive…” as if “…time has laid a friendly hand on everything…”, revealing the traits of Italian identity as cultural identity, as opposed to the national identity that had already been established with the liberal state and fascism.
