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The Periodic Table (Essential Penguin)
by: Primo Levi

List Price: £8.99

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Used Price: £1.83
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780140296617
ISBN: 0140296611
Label: Penguin Books Ltd
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: February 22, 2001
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Studio: Penguin Books Ltd
Sales Rank: 160645

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Editorial Review:

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.

Product Description:
A chemist by training, Primo Levi became one of the supreme witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In these haunting reflections inspired by the elements of the periodic table, he ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and 'inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for twenty-two 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.

Synopsis:
'A book it is necessary to read' - Saul Bellow. In these haunting reflections, Primo Levi, a chemist by training, takes the elements of the periodic table as his starting point and inspiration. Written with understated eleoquence and shot through with deep humanity, Levi ranges from young love to political savagery in this, one of his most famous works.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- 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. The content reinforces the form and the form the content to give a really high quality novel.

This was our group's favorite book by a modest lead over Lolita and The Master and Margarita. It is beautiful and moving and much more enjoyable than his good but harrowing Auschwitz tales.

Please do not be put off by the slow start - Argon is a very thin, rare gas and this chapter is one of the least engaging perhaps for that reason. Iron was most people's favorite element.

Rating:

- Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated
I saw a negative review here, and I want to speak in this book's defence. Not that the great Primo Levi needs me, it's simply that The Periodic Table is the book I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years.

Levi was by profession a chemist. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction); each has a chemical element for its title and that element appears in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter, Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Primo Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going ... Read More:

Rating:

- A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers'
This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she ... Read More:

Rating:

- wrong book
This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!

Rating:

- Recommended for academic fairies.
The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.

Books : The Periodic Table (Essential Penguin)