The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

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Family saga weaves art, history, and survival.

This book is like a time capsule, unravelling the intricate history of the Ephrussi family alongside the journey of a remarkable collection of netsuke. It's a profoundly personal read, imbued with the sensitivity of the author as a ceramicist, which makes the history he traces feel all the more tangible. If you're keen on exploring the intersections of art, war, and identity through the lens of a single family's experiences, 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' promises a compelling narrative.

  • Costa Book Award for Biography (2010)
  • J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography Nominee (2011)
  • The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (2011)
  • Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2011)
  • Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize Nominee (2011)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

Regular price $11.90
Unit price
per
Compare to estimated retail price: S$40.20  
ISBN: 9780374105976
Authors: Edmund de Waal
Date of Publication: 2010-08-31
Format: Hardcover
Related Collections: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Art
Goodreads rating: 3.95
(rated by 59365 readers)

Description

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
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Family saga weaves art, history, and survival.

This book is like a time capsule, unravelling the intricate history of the Ephrussi family alongside the journey of a remarkable collection of netsuke. It's a profoundly personal read, imbued with the sensitivity of the author as a ceramicist, which makes the history he traces feel all the more tangible. If you're keen on exploring the intersections of art, war, and identity through the lens of a single family's experiences, 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' promises a compelling narrative.

  • Costa Book Award for Biography (2010)
  • J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography Nominee (2011)
  • The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (2011)
  • Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2011)
  • Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize Nominee (2011)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.