The Hare with Amber Eyes
London ceramicist Edmund de Waal inherits a collection of 264 Japanese netsuke, miniature carved figures, from his great-uncle Iggie in Tokyo. The collection had been bought in 1870s Paris by Charles Ephrussi, a banking heir and the model for Proust's Charles Swann. De Waal spends years tracing the netsuke through five generations of his family. From Charles's Paris salon to the Vienna palace where his cousin Viktor raised four children, to the 1938 Anschluss when the Nazis stripped the building and the family fled. The netsuke survived because Anna, a maid, hid them one by one in her mattress. De Waal builds the book as a study of objects, rooms, and the dignity of European Jewish families across a century of catastrophe.
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A London ceramicist traces a collection of 264 Japanese netsuke through five generations of his Jewish banking family from 1870s Paris to Nazi Vienna and Tokyo.
Yes. The Hare with Amber Eyes is Edmund de Waal's 2010 memoir tracing his family's history through a collection of Japanese netsuke that survived the Holocaust. It is widely cited as one of the best memoirs of the 21st century.
Yes. The Hare with Amber Eyes won the Costa Biography Award in 2010 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Edmund de Waal is also an internationally celebrated ceramic artist.
The Hare with Amber Eyes was written by Edmund de Waal, published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Hare with Amber Eyes is 353 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Hare with Amber Eyes takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Hare with Amber Eyes is a standalone novel by Edmund de Waal, not part of a series.
The Hare with Amber Eyes is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
