The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.

The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.

The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past.

Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.

The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile.

In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

From reader reviews:

Leonard Bassett:

The book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss can give more knowledge and also the precise product information about everything you want. So why must we leave a good thing like a book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss? Several of you have a different opinion about guide. But one aim that will book can give many data for us. It is absolutely correct. Right now, try to closer with your book. Knowledge or details that you take for that, you are able to give for each other; you are able to share all of these. Book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss has simple shape however, you know: it has great and large function for you. You can search the enormous world by start and read a guide. So it is very wonderful.

Betty Borgen:

This The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss is great guide for you because the content which can be full of information for you who else always deal with world and still have to make decision every minute. This kind of book reveal it info accurately using great arrange word or we can declare no rambling sentences inside it. So if you are read the idea hurriedly you can have whole info in it. Doesn't mean it only provides you with straight forward sentences but hard core information with wonderful delivering sentences. Having The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss in your hand like finding the world in your arm, information in it is not ridiculous one. We can say that no reserve that offer you world within ten or fifteen tiny right but this publication already do that. So , this can be good reading book. Hey Mr. and Mrs. hectic do you still doubt which?

Paul Kennedy:

Beside this kind of The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss in your phone, it might give you a way to get more close to the new knowledge or data. The information and the knowledge you will got here is fresh from oven so don't be worry if you feel like an previous people live in narrow commune. It is good thing to have The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss because this book offers to you readable information. Do you oftentimes have book but you don't get what it's all about. Oh come on, that won't happen if you have this within your hand. The Enjoyable set up here cannot be questionable, just like treasuring beautiful island. So do you still want to miss the item? Find this book in addition to read it from today!

Rosalie Castillo:

Guide is one of source of information. We can add our understanding from it. Not only for students but additionally native or citizen want book to know the change information of year to help year. As we know those books have many advantages. Beside we add our knowledge, may also bring us to around the world. From the book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss we can acquire more advantage. Don't you to definitely be creative people? To get creative person must love to read a book. Just choose the best book that acceptable with your aim. Don't become doubt to change your life with this book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss. You can more pleasing than now.