In January 1947, the manuscript was initially rejected by Einaudi, with the writers Cesare Pavese and Natalia Ginzburg thinking it too early after the war for such an account.[3] However Levi managed to find a smaller publisher, De Silva,[7] who printed 2,500 copies of the book, 1,500 of which were sold, mostly in Levi's hometown of Turin. In 1955, Levi signed a contract with Einaudi for a new edition, which was published in 1958. The initial printing of 2000 copies was followed by a second of the same size.[8]
An English translation by Stuart Woolf was published in 1959. A German translation by Heinz Reidt appeared in 1961 (titled Ist das ein Mensch?) and a French edition in the same year.[7]
All translations were completed under Levi's close supervision. He was particularly careful to oversee the German translation, writing in The Drowned and the Saved: "I did not trust my German publisher. I wrote him an almost insolent letter: I warned him not to remove or change a single word in the text, and I insisted that he send me the manuscript of the translation in batches ... I wanted to check on not merely its lexical but also its inner faithfulness."[9] Robert S. C. Gordon writes that Levi went on to develop a close relationship with Reidt.[10] The German edition contains a special preface addressed to the German people, which Levi said he wrote out of passionate necessity to remind them what they had done.[11]
If This Is a Man is often published alongside Levi's second work of witness, The Truce (Italian title: La Tregua). The English translation of that book was published in 1965, again by Stuart Woolf, and was awarded the John Florio Prize for Italian translation in 1966.