The Mirror Maker was published in 1989 and is the translated English version of a select number of Primo Levi's previously published stories and essays. Levi would submit a new piece of literature to the centrist Italian newspaper La Stampa on a weekly basis and in 1986 some of these stories and essays were gathered and published in a volume titled Racconti e saggi. An English version of this collection was later produced, after some of the titles were selected and then translated, under the name The Mirror Maker in 1989; two years after Levi's death.
The Mirror Maker begins with an exploration of Levi's experience at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was held between 1944 and 1945 as a result of being a persecuted Italian-Jew. However, rather unusually given the horrific treatment in concentration camps, Levi discusses the life and environment critically, rather than emotionally and in doing so provides a stark contrast to other writers at the time. The analytical style prevalent in Levi's Holocaust stories is most likely derived from his training as a chemist as well as his completion of a degree in chemistry, where he learned to be objective rather than subjective. The collection of stories and essays in The Mirror Maker also includes a return to Levi's initial writings of science fiction and he documents the monumental moon landing in 1969.
