The Periodic Table

By: Primo Levi

Narrated by: Neville Jason

Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element, the collection tells of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before, during, and after Auschwitz in luminous, clear, and unfailingly beautiful prose. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and is considered to be Levi's crowning achievement.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©1898 1975, 1982, 1994 & 2014 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino; Translation © Schocken Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooks

A beautiful, wonderfully crafted and thoughtful gem

I have been mean to read this for years. I wish I had do so sooner. Such a beautiful and smart book.

inspiring and fascinating

the most amazing science book ever written- by one of the most amazing individuals to ever live

If You Loved 'All The Light We Cannot See'

The prose of Levi is the best example of 'Writer's Slight of Hand'. With elegant metaphors he spins the web of the 'Ponderous root of man' - Chemistry. But the allusions to the elements of the PERIODIC TABLE are the frame in which fits the horrors of the Holocaust. The superficial layer is beguiling - Noble Elements, Gold, Sulphur, Zinc, Vanadium. From these there emerges a riff of personal history, personal tragedy and political horror. Thus Noble gases are both 'Noble and Inert' - much like the Turinese family from which Levi springs. Vanadium is the springboard for the reconstruction of a chemist's role in making artificial rubber miles from the crematoria; making rubber and yet agnostic to the nearby horror. For the listener there are some overstatements of science BUT they are balanced by structures of brilliant writing. I could not imagine reading this book as, the narrator, Neville Jason speaks both for the writer, articulates for the listener and provides articulation which informs the prose. This is seminal writing and a high-wire act of story telling and the story teller.

Great narration of an amazing book

Few people need me to state that Levi’s book is an essential read, but it is! What I particularly want to emphasize in this review is how fantastic the name rater is. Often I am frustrated by narrators poor renderings of foreign languages, sometimes even of German words that appear in English with some frequency. This narrator has a beautiful voice and a crisp accent in English, and his renderings of Italian, Latin, and German flow beautifully and thus don’t distract from the substance of the book. Thank you!

Profoundly moving

Listening to this series of stories which I had read many years before I was struck by the extraordinary humanity and compassion of this unique man. How it v was possible to have survived Auschwitz and still maintain a balanced and objective view of life is beyond me. In his place I would have spent my remaining years focused on retribution and vengeance. A rare human being. The narration by Neville Jason is in sync with the unfolding accounts, convincing and in some cases deeply moving.

David Evan Glasser

VERY interesting format for stories

The beginning was a little confusing, as I didn't know what to expect, but after powering through, was totally captivated by each element's "story". The narrator reminds me if David Attenborough; LOVED him. Tongue-in-cheek humkr is delightful!

Wonderful on audiobook, story wanders a bit

This was an intriguing book and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going in. It ended up being well-written (more of a high literature formal style of writing) and very interesting. It took some concentration to read but I ended up liking it. My only complaint is that the story wanders quite a bit.

I listened to this on audiobook and Jason did a perfect job in reading it. He sounded exactly like I though Levi would sound and did a great job with all the different languages and accents in here. I would definitely recommend listening to this on audiobook if you listen to audiobooks.

This book is a collection stories with each one being named after a chemical element. Some how the element name ties into the story named after it. The stories jump between renditions of Levi’s life and stories that he has written throughout his life. Because of that, things jump around a bit and it can be a bit hard to remember if you are reading about Levi’s life or if you are in the middle of a story that he created about fictional characters.

My other complaint is that the first 40 minutes were really a drag; in this portion of the story Levi introduced a whole bunch of Jewish terminology and characters that have nothing to do with anything. It was awful to get through but I am glad I stuck with it because the rest of the book was very good.

Levi writes in a very intelligent way and has a humorous tone. He weaves his experience as a chemist into the events of his lifetime and it ends up being an intriguing look at both science and life of that era. I really enjoyed it and it brought back excellent memories of my college chemistry work. I could also easily relate to some of his later product troubleshooting stories.

Overall this was an intriguing, entertaining, and accessible memoire on science in the WWII era and one man’s journey through that time. I would recommend to those interested in the 1940’s and chemistry and how the two collided during that time.

Autobiographical, not technical

Rough start, but I eventually was hooked. There was some chemistry, lots of interesting history, many sobering looks at homo sapiens.

Palatable Horror

Levi survived Auschwitz, and yet this book is fun, showing an appreciation for life as a chemist. Yes, he is bitter, yes he is depressed, but he comes across as nice and interesting.

The pinnacle of science and humanity in writing

Yes, deserved of accolades. A chemical engineer and Holocaust survivor, the author provides life lessons with equal part objective description and wrenching humanity. Thank you, universe, for this gift of human industry.