The Periodic Table

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. In these haunting reflections, Levi, a chemist by training, takes the elements of the periodic table as his inspiratio. He ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and `inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for 22 years - to life-giving carbon. `Iron' honours the mountain-climbing resistance hero who put iron in Levi's student soul, `Cerium' recalls the improvised cigarette lighters which saved his life in Auschwitz, while `Vanadium' describes an eerie post-war correspondence with the man who had been his `boss' there. All are written with characteristically understated eloquence and shot through with deep humanity...