The Periodic Table (Everyman?s Library Contemporary Classics)

Levi, Primo

ISBN 10: 1857152182 / ISBN 13: 9781857152180

Published by Everyman, 1995

About this Item

1995. hardcover. Mingling fact and fiction, science and personal record, history and anecdote, the author uses his training as an industrial chemist and the terrible years he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz to illuminate the human condition. Translator(s): Rosenthal, Raymond. Num Pages: 242 pages. BIC Classification: 2ADT; BG; FA; HBJD; HBTZ1. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 212 x 135 x 22. Weight in Grams: 414. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9781857152180

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Periodic Table (Everyman?s Library Contemporary Classics)
• Publisher: Everyman
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857152182
• ISBN 13: 9781857152180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

An extraordinary kind of autobiography in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and its starting-point from one of the elements in the periodic table. Mingling fact and fiction, science and personal record, history and anecdote, Levi uses his training as an industrial chemist and the terrible years he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz to illuminate the human condition. Yet this exquisitely lucid text is also humourous and even witty in a way possible only to one who has looked into the abyss.

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.