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Amazon.co.uk Review
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. Taking the knowledge he gained 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.
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Review
"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
With a new Introduction by Neal Ascherson
"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
With a new Introduction by Neal Ascherson
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
There are the so-called inert gases in the air we breathe. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
There are the so-called inert gases in the air we breathe. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I want to defend this book from a couple of unfair reviews. Not that the great Primo Levi should need me, but The Periodic Table is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years and so I don't want people to get the wrong impression of what it is.
For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.
Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.
For most of his working life, Levi was a professional chemist who also wrote on the side. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction). Each chapter has a chemical element for its title and that element appears somehow in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter Primo Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it's a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he, amazingly, got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter; then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin, where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory. He became an expert in the chemistry of varnishes, though the book doesn't mention it. Chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre, that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others are prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for a curious detail, runs all the way through. You have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.
Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done; the English doesn't disturb the original. Translated Italian can easily become very turgid, but Rosenthal has avoided that. There is an introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. I love this book. And for the price, what a deal.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In a largely autobiographical synthesis (fictional tales of mercury and lead are neatly slid into the melting-pot), Primo Levi assesses his life in terms of the chemical elements. And as Levi says, this story is not invented, and reality is always more complex than invention: less kempt, cruder, less rounded out.
Non-chemists have no fear. This is a wonderfully rich alloy of science and history, language and memory. Forget gold and iron: it was hard, grey, obscure vanadium that stood out like a thorn for the troubled, hopeful times in which we live. Vanadium’s is a story of the real world, where the armed exist and the honest and the unarmed clear the road for them, and where all men must later answer for mankind. Profound and life-affirming stuff indeed.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A beautiful book, filled with a real fascination and amused respect for the intricacies of creation and the vagaries of humanity. Levi survived Auschwitz because of his knowledge of industrial chemistry, and here he takes 21 elements from the Periodic Table as starting points for fragments of autobiography and fiction. Touching and funny, and sometimes unutterably sad. Far, far more than "a good read on a train"!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The more I read Levi the more I enjoy it.
I started with "If this is a man", as I imagine most people do, but there is so much more to Primo Levi. Read more
Published 5 days ago by danny s.
The Periodic Table review
If This Is A Man took me a long time to get into, perhaps because of other commitments. The Periodic Table is a far tougher read. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Oliver Scully
Read 'If This is a Man' First
The life story of a gentle and intelligent man, missing out the most important part.
Voted the best science book ever written by the Royal Academy, this isn't a science... Read more
Voted the best science book ever written by the Royal Academy, this isn't a science... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Brownbear101
Fusion of science and art
This is a collection of essays which contain elements of biography, loosely linked by headings referring to elements in the Periodic Table. Read more
Published 10 months ago by T. Brill
An Inspiration
As a student who's aspiring to study chemistry at uni, I was recommended to read this book by my chemistry teacher. Read more
Published 16 months ago by pokerface12
wish he'd been my chemistry teacher!
this is a wonderfully touching book, almost entirely autobiographical, seen through the eyes of the chemist. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Avid Reader
premo levi books very confusing
I dont rate this author very well his books are contradictory
and confusing to read consequently you just give up trying to
make sense of it. Read more
and confusing to read consequently you just give up trying to
make sense of it. Read more
Published 22 months ago by M. Speight
The Periodic Table
How wonderful to read stories based around the building blocks of life ie elements. The stories are so cleverly woven. Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by Sue
Memoirs of more than just chemicals
Loosely structured around a selection of the chemical elements, this book is a collection of short stories from the author's memories of a life working in chemistry, together with... Read more
Published on 11 April 2009 by John Holland
Carphone Warehouse Book Club's favorite read in 2007
The unusual form of the book, each chapter relating to an element of the periodic table (not every element is included), to tell the tale of a chemist's life is highly effective. Read more
Published on 31 July 2008 by ajk77
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