The Periodic Table

Primo Levi's Periodic Table is a group of autobiographical episodes of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian doctoral-level chemist under the Fascist regime and afterward. They include various themes that follow a chronological sequence. His ancestry at the start. Then his studies of chemistry and practical use of the studies in wartime Italy.

A pair of imaginative tales he wrote at that time, and his subsequent experiences as an anti-Fascist partisan follow. Subsequently, a piece about his arrest and imprisonment, interrogation, and internment in the Fossoli di Carpi and Auschwitz camps. And finally, his postwar life as an industrial chemist.

Every story in Primo Levi's Periodic Table, 21 in total, has the name of a chemical element and is connected to it in some way.