The Periodic Table
A memoir in 21 chapters, each named for a chemical element, by the Italian Jewish chemist and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi: his Piedmontese ancestors, chemistry school under Fascism, wartime capture, and decades of industrial lab work, with two of his youthful fictions folded in. First published as Il sistema periodico (Einaudi, Turin, 1975); English translation by Raymond Rosenthal (Schocken, 1984); the standard Schocken paperback runs 233 pages.
Piedmontese family genealogy and dialect etymology: that is what greets you on page one, and even the book's admirers wave you past it, "The very first story might be a little odd and discouraging but either soldier on or skip it altogether," one concedes. Get through and the trouble shifts: two youthful fantasy stories interrupt the memoir, "I didn't like his fantasy stories (Lead and Mercury), nor the final story which I found too mystical (Carbon)," and the shop talk defeats even professionals: "as a free-lance chemical consultant and problem solver the talk baffled the hell out of me!" Come for the testimony and it is elsewhere: "There's remarkably little attention to his concentration camp period (the topic of other books)."
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
