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The Periodic Table

Front Cover
74 Reviews
Penguin Books, Limited, Apr 1, 2012 - Authors, Italian - 194 pages
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
"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.

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The heart of it is simple story telling. - Goodreads
Huge inspiration to my writing... - Goodreads
Educational is more like it. - Goodreads
However, its plot was also worth the literary trip. - Goodreads

Review: The Periodic Table (Penguin Modern Classics)

User Review  - Ugh - Goodreads

I wish I hadn't taken so long to get around to reading The Periodic Table. Not only is it a great book on science, it's also brilliantly and wonderfully written. Levi has the intelligence of Borges ... Read full review

Review: The Periodic Table

User Review  - Eddy Allen - Goodreads

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 ... Read full review

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About the author (2012)

In 1919, Primo Levi was born into a Jewish family in Turin, Italy, in 1919. Despite the anti-Semitic laws introduced to Italy by Mussolini's government, he was able to complete his degree in Chemistry at Turin University in 1941. When the Germans invaded northern Italy in 1943, Levi escaped to the mountains to join a group of anti-fascist partisans but was soon captured and eventually deported to Auschwitz. He was liberated in January 1945. After the war he resumed his career as a chemist, retiring only in 1975. His graphic account of his time in Auschwitz, If This is a Man, was published in 1947. Levi went on to write many other books, including The Wrench, If Not Now, When? and The Periodic Table, emerging not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust, but as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes, especially science. Primo Levi committed suicide on 11 April 1987.

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