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The Periodic Table

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The Periodic Table

By: Primo Levi
Narrated by: Neville Jason
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About this listen

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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©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 Essays Nonfiction
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Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan) wrote that great books with the ability to withstand the test of time have high dimensionality, Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow) echoed this when he said that the best novels offer different things to different people. The Periodic Table is such a work: it spans multiple genres (autobiography, fiction, science) and covers a wide range of topics (chemistry, history, romance, psychology, business, life itself). And yet despite being high dimensional and difficult to categorise or summarise, it is simply organised according to chemical elements in the periodic table.

The skilled translator preserves the beauty and subtlety of Levi’s prose, and this audiobook is superbly narrated by Neville Jason, someone with a taste for great works (see his reading of War and Peace).

A beautifully written and high dimensional work

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So stunning. Officially my favorite author EVER. I was left in tears at the end of this one after I had also listened to his other audiobooks, knowing that I had come to an end of hearing his words in my head and thinking about them all day. So glad I found him.

Astoundingly beautiful

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This beautifully constructed autobiographical book comes to life when narrated with skill and aplomb by Neville Jason. Fascinating in detail yet enormous in scope .

A wondrous mix of the art & science of a rarelife

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