The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal

A New York Times Bestseller An Economist Book of the Year Costa Book Award Winner for Biography Galaxy National Book Award Winner (New Writer of the Year Award) Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots-which are then sold, collected, and handed on-he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. And so begins The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire. Editorial Reviews The author was apprenticed as a potter...and his aesthetic sensibility extends to language: there is much wit and dramatic instinct to relish in these pages. But the intelligence and creativity with which de Waal constructs a family history are what make this special book so supremely winning. -The New York Times - Megan Buskey ...The Hare With Amber Eyes belongs on the same shelf with Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Andr Aciman's Out of Egypt, and Sybille Bedford's A Legacy. All four are wistful cantos of mutability, depictions of how even the lofty, beautiful and fabulously wealthy can crack and shatter as easily as Faberg glass or Meissen porcelain-or, sometimes, be as tough and enduring as netsuke, those little Japanese figurines carved out of ivory or boxwood. -The Washington Post - Michael Dirda In 1938, the Nazis annexed Austria. Systematically, they began to strip the Jews of their property, confiscating paintings, books, jewelry, and objets d'art. Everything of beauty and value was lost to these people and their families. But thanks to a clever maidservant, who each day squirreled away a few pieces of Japanese netsuke in her apron pockets, a collection of intricately carved ivory was miraculously saved for de Waal's family. This act of loyalty is just one of the intriguing tales involving an antique netsuke collection that has been in de Waal's family since the 1870s, and through which he traces his family history as it passed from person to person, across two continents and five generations. Along the way, readers meet de Waal's colorful ancestors, like Charles Ephrussi of Paris: art connoisseur, friend to impressionist painters, and the model for Proust's character Swann in Remembrance of Things Past. A natural researcher, de Waal provides tantalizing glimpses into the life of each owner, with rich details about the art, architecture, fashion, literature, celebrities, and politics of the times. Written in a tender, poignant voice, The Hare with Amber Eyes is an exquisite history of an Old World family, of the society in which they lived, and of their beloved objects. It's a tale of art and wealth, of survival and the bittersweet memories of family heirlooms lost and found. - In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century. Grain merchants in Odessa, various family members migrated to Vienna and Paris, becoming successful bankers. Secular Jews, they sought assimilation in a period of virulent anti-Semitism. In Paris, Charles Ephrussi purchased a large collection of Japanese netsuke, tiny hand-carved figures including a hare with amber eyes. The collection passed to Viktor Ephrussi in Vienna and became the family's greatest legacy. Loyal citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Vienna Ephrussis were devastated by the outcome of WWI and were later driven from their home by the imposition of Nazi rule over Austria. After WWII, they discovered that their maid, Anna, had preserved the netsuke collection, which Ignace Ephrussi inherited, and he settled in postwar Japan. Today, the netsuke reside with de Waal (descended from the family's Vienna branch) and serve as the embodiment of his family history. A somewhat rambling narrative with special appeal to art historians, this account is nonetheless rich in drama and valuable anecdote. 20 b&w illus. (Aug.) - Publishers Weekly A family memoir written with a grace and modesty that almost belie the sweep of its contents: Proust, Rilke, Japanese art, the rue de Monceau, Vienna during the Second World War. The most enchanting history lesson imaginable. -The New Yorker An extraordinary history...A wondrous book, as lustrous and exquisitely crafted as the netsuke at its heart. -The Christian Science Monitor A lovely, gripping book. -The Wall Street Journal Enthralling . . . [de Waal's] essayistic exploration of his family's past pointedly avoids any sentimentality . . . The Hare with Amber Eyes belongs on the same shelf with Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory. -Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World This is a book Sebald would have loved. -The Irish Times At one level [Edmund de Waal] writes in vivid detail of how the fortunes were used to establish the Ephrussis' lavish lives and high positions in Paris and Vienna society. And, as Jews, of their vulnerability: the Paris family shaken by turn-of-the century anti-Semitism surging out of the Dreyfus affair; the Vienna branch utterly destroyed in Hitler's 1937 Anschluss . . . At a deeper level, though, Hare is about something more . . . it uses the grandeur to light up interior matters: aspirations, passions, their passing; all in a duel, and a duet, of elegy and irony. -Richard Eder, The Boston Globe Absorbing . . . In this book about people who defined themselves by the objects they owned, de Waal demonstrates that human stories are more powerful than even the greatest works of art. -Adam Kirsch, The New Republic Remarkable . . . To be handed a story as durable and exquisitely crafted as this is a rare pleasure . . . Like the netsuke themselves, this book is impossible to put down. You have in your hands a masterpiece. -Frances Wilson, The Sunday Times (London) From a hard and vast archival mass of journals, memoirs, newspaper clippings and art-history books, Mr. de Waal has fashioned, stroke by minuscule stroke, a book as fresh with detail as if it had been written from life, and as full of beauty and whimsy as a netsuke from the hands of a master carver. Buy two copies of his book; keep one and give the other to your closest bookish friend. -The Economist What a treat of a book! It projects an iridescent mirage that once was real, a pageant of exquisite fragility, an aesthetic passion somehow surviving the brutalities of history. Mr. de Waal's nostalgia is tart, tactile, marvelously nuanced. -Frederic Morton, author of A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888/1889 and The Rothschilds: Portrait of a Dynasty A self-questioning, witty, sharply perceptive book . . . The Hare with Amber Eyes is rich in epiphanic moments . . . By writing objects into his family story [de Waal] has achieved something remarkable. -Tanya Harrod, The Times Literary Supplement A beautiful and unusual book . . . [A] unique memoir of [de Waal's] family . . . De Waal has a mystical ability to so inhabit the long-gone moment as to seem to suspend inexorable history, personal and impersonal . . . A work that succeeds in several known genres: as family memoir, travel literature (de Waal's Japan is the nearest thing to being there, and over decades), essays on migration and exile, on cultural misperceptions, and on de Waal's attempt to define his relationship with his own kaolin creations. His book is also a new genre, unnamed and maybe unnameable. -Veronica Horwell, The Guardian Part family memoir, part Proustian confession, subtle, spare and elegant. -Hilary Spurling, The Independent A marvelously absorbing synthesis of art history, detective story and memoir . . . A nimble history of one of the richest European families at the turn of the century . . . Remarkable. -Kirkus Reviews - From the Publisher A nimble history of one of the richest European families at the turn of the century. De Waal, a notable London potter, is a descendent of the wealthy Ephrussi family. He seized on an inherited collection of Japanese netsuke-small decorative figures made out of wood or ivory-and traced its ownership down the family line, from patriarch Charles Ephrussi, originally from Odessa, to Great-Uncle Iggie, of Tokyo, who left the 264 elegant figures to the author upon his death in 1993. The family's fabulous wealth derived from the grain-trading business, operating between Paris and Vienna. Charles, who assembled the collection, was a dandyish art collector who settled in Paris at the age of 21, wrote art criticism and a book on Durer and patronized the early Impressionists. He was quite possibly the real-life character on whom Proust modeled his Charles Swann. Subsequently, the netsuke was given to Charles's cousin Viktor on the occasion of his wedding in 1899-just at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when French anti-Semitism burst forth in full force-and the collection passed to Vienna, where the family resided at the surpassingly beautiful Ephrussi Palais on the Ringstrasse. Anti-Jewish feeling pervaded all facets of their lives, and two world wars wreaked havoc on the Ephrussi fortune. Eventually the netsuke was saved from the rapacious hands of the Nazis by a servant who stuffed it in her mattress. De Waal keeps a pleasantly ironic tone throughout this remarkable journey and nicely handles the clutter of objects and relatives. The roster of characters is daunting at first, but this narrative proves a marvelously absorbing synthesis of art history, detective story and memoir. Agent: Felicity Bryan/Felicity Bryan Agency - Kirkus Reviews