num_pages: 243
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Periodic Table
titlecomplete: The Periodic Table
characters: Primo Levi
genres: Biography, Italy, Short Stories, Science, Nonfiction, Memoir, Chemistry, Classics, Italian Literature, History
ratings_count: 16306
places: Turin
publisher: Everyman's Library