The micro-histories of chemicals and men. This is a somewhat disjointed little book - if deliberately so - the memoir of a scientist that comes in little pieces, in beakers and test tubes and under fume hoods. That comes, sometimes, in fiction - in the little stories that Levi told himself when there were gaps in the bigger ones.

These histories illuminate each other. The chemicals are metaphors and catalysts and touchstones, they are memories and a structure to build an identity upon. Levi is as much (more?) of a chemist as a writer, and these fragments of his life, warped around the spectre of his time at Auschwitz (although not described in detail in this book, it is the absence around which the book revolves) are ordered into elements. This comes to culmination towards the end: the "Vanadium" chapter is particularly affecting, although as with much of the rest of the book one cannot really call it triumphant - the moral failures of Auschwitz and fascism and the continued desire to look away (and look darkly) are themes that resonate throughout the text.