The Periodic Table

by Primo Levi and Raymond Rosenthal

Published 12 December 1984

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.


Moments of Reprieve

by Primo Levi

Published 1 February 1986

Primo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century: a man who survived one of the ugliest times in history, yet who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with an unaffected tenderness.

Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, 'the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue'. Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the 'bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve'.


If Not Now, When?

by Primo Levi

Published 15 April 1985
Primo Levi was among the greatest witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi's characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside THE PERIOD TABLE and IF THIS IS A MAN as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of our times.

Other People's Trades

by Primo Levi

Published 1 May 1989
OTHER PEOPLE'S TRADES contains 43 essays originally written for newspaper publication. They are, in the author's words, 'the fruit of my roaming about as a curious dilettante for more than a decade ...invasions of the field, incursions into other people's hunting preserves, forays into the boundless territories of zoology, astronomy and linguistics' 'There is no contest. The noblest book of the year' Anita Brookner, SPECTATOR 'Read an essay or two every few days; it'll be like meeting him in a Turin cafe, hearing him talk of wonderful, funny and horrible things in his gentle, dry voce, with all the virtues of his chemist's training - 'humility, patience and method', a wonderful nose and eye, and a steady hand' NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY 'Everything Primo Levi has ever written is well worth reading, and this collection is no exception' THE TIMES 'There is no contest. The noblest book of the year' SPECTATOR