THE PERIODIC TABLE

First UK edition, first printing. Original red cloth with silver titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding firm with some bumping to the bottom corners and spine tips. The contents, with a grey smudge on the front free endpaper from a previously erased pencil mark and some toning to the paper stock are otherwise clean and without stamps or inscriptions. Complete the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper which has the faint remains of a sticky label on the bottom edge of the rear panel. Not price-clipped (£9.95 on the front flap).

A series of autobiographical short stories by Primo Levi, a chemist and writer, each named after a different element on the periodic table which links to the story's subject matter. The stories draw on Levi's experiences as a Jewish-Italian living under the Fascist regime in Italy and as a prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp. In 2006 it was named 'the best science book ever' by the Royal Institution of Great Britain.