Audiobook Review – The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, Narrated by Neville Jason (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Non-fiction
Length: 9 hours and 32 minutes (262 pages)
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Release Date: December 7, 2015
ASIN: B018WDL3B6
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Swapped through Paperbackswap.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“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.”

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.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge