A fascinating journey to discover the (presumed!) ultimate constituents of the universe and the mysterious paradoxes of quantum theory. A high-level popular scientific text, decidedly provocative, which in twenty well-paced chapters (and a methodological note) delves, in language that is as readable and light as possible, into the description of the research that has led over the centuries to identify, and subsequently disidentify, the elements at the basis of our physical reality.