The Periodic Table
  • Published: 4 April 1995
  • ISBN: 9780805210415
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $36.00

The Periodic Table

Formats & editions
Paperback
12 Jun 2012
Paperback
28 Jun 2010
Paperback
4 Apr 1995
Hardback
27 Oct 1995
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'So it happens, therefore, that every element says something to someone'

The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew.

 

It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi’s gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi’s masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him.

 

The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.
  • Published: 4 April 1995
  • ISBN: 9780805210415
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $36.00
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About the author

Primo Levi

Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919. The son of an educated middle-class Jewish family, he graduated with a degree in chemistry and found a job as a research chemist in Milan. In December 1943, he was arrested as part of the anti-fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz. After the war, Levi resumed his career as a chemist, retiring only in 1975.

His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, was published in 1947 and he went on to write many other books, including If Not Now, When? and The Periodic Table, emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust, but as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes. In 1987, Primo Levi died in a fall that is widely believed to have been suicide.

Also by Primo Levi

The Survivor
The Complete Works of Primo Levi
The Magic Paint
A Tranquil Star
A Tranquil Star
Moments Of Reprieve
If Not Now, When?
See all

Praise for The Periodic Table

“I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated…I was deeply impressed.” –Saul Bellow “The best introduction to the psychological world of one of the most important and gifted writers of our time.”–Italo Calvino “A work of healing, of tranquil, even buoyant imagination.” –The New York Times Book Review “Brilliant, grave and oddly sunny; certainly a masterpiece.” –Los Angeles Times “Every chapter is full of surprises, insights, high humor, and language that often rises to poetry.” –The New Yorker “One of the most important Italian writers.” –Umberto Eco