With the English-language release of “A Tranquil Star,” Primo Levi’s short-story collection, Ruth Franklin argues that the stories must be considered on their own terms. “It is a curse of those who write about the Holocaust that they are eternally identified with their horrific, unapproachable subject, even when they try to take their lives in other directions. … Not every piece of writing can be expected to bear the weight of the Holocaust, and to load these stories down with such an impossible freight risks damaging their delicate humor and intelligence.”