The Periodic Table

'A book it is necessary to read' - Saul Bellow. In these haunting reflections, Primo Levi, a chemist by training, takes the elements of the periodic table as his starting point and inspiration. Written with understated eleoquence and shot through with deep humanity, Levi ranges from young love to political savagery in this, one of his most famous works.

Writer Primo Levi (1919-1987), an Italian Jew, did not come to the wide attention of the English-reading audience until the last years of his life. A survivor of the Holocaust and imprisonment in Auschwitz, Levi is considered to be one of the century's most compelling voices, and The Periodic Table is his most famous book. Springboarding from his training as a chemist, Levi uses the elements as metaphors to create a cycle of linked, somewhat autobiographical tales, including stories of the Piedmontese Jewish community he came from, and of his response to the Holocaust.