Vanadium and the Grey Doctor Muller

A concise yet thought-provoking essay on Levi’s chapter “Vanadium” from The Periodic Table that includes the original text.

After surviving Auschwitz, Primo Levi persistently questioned how the same German culture that produced Goethe and Beethoven could also create Nazism. Seeking to understand the circumstances and forces that turned people into barbarians—and to confront postwar Germans with his testimony—Levi sought a dialogue with them, one that runs through both his fiction and non-fiction.

About the Author

Marco Belpoliti is an Italian writer, essayist, and literary critic. A leading scholar of Primo Levi, he curated the Opere complete (Einaudi, 2016) and co-edited The Voice of Memory: Primo Levi Interviews 1961–1987 (The New Press, 2001). He is the author of Primo Levi: Di fronte e di profilo and La prova, and wrote the screenplay for La strada di Levi (2006). Belpoliti is a professor at the University of Bergamo and co-director of the literary journal Riga. He also directs Doppiozero, an online magazine and publishing house.