The Periodic Table: A Memoir

by Primo Levi, Raymond Rosenthal (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805210415
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/04/1995
Series:	Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	175,451
Product dimensions:	5.16(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.69(d)
Lexile:	1230L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

PRIMO LEVI was born in Turin in 1919 to an Italian-Jewish family. Arrested as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance, he was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. After the war, Levi resumed his careers as a chemist and a writer in Turin until his untimely death in 1987. During his writing career, Levi won every distinguished prize in his native Italy. The Periodic Table, the first of his books to appear in America, was selected as one of the Best Books of 1985 by The New York Times Book Review.

What People are Saying About This

Saul Bellow

After a few pages I immerse myself in the Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential….

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

This curious memoir by an Italian Jew who came of age under Mussolini is organized by the periodic table of the elementschapter titles range from Argon to Zinc. Levi portrays himself as a young, aspiring chemist eager to fathom nature's secrets. The sections describing his ordeal in a detention camp, awaiting deportation to Auschwitz, are the most vivid. PW called this an ``odd, haunting book.'' (March)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

....[A] wealth of wisdom about human relationships and values and the beauty of the world. -- The New York Times Books of the Century

Charles McGrath

Narrator Neville Jason brings a soothing tone to Primo Levi's collection of autobiographical and fictional short stories. Set during WWII, Levi's stories demand breadth, and during the more emotional and extreme episodes, Jason delivers with aplomb. In particular, he handles Levi's description of his capture by SS guards with sensitivity. However, one is disappointed by his delivery of Levi’s many descriptions of his scientific experiments. Jason doesn’t quite capture the excitement and fervor of the text, a shortcoming that is occasionally coupled with impurities in the qualities of audio. However, he excels during Levi's intelligent and otherworldly fictional passages, to which Jason lends an aphoristic character. This is an audiobook packed with wisdom, and, in spite of some dull moments, Jason manages to inject Levi's work with charm and poignancy. Z.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile