Describe Out Of Books The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
| Title | : | The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss |
| Author | : | Edmund de Waal |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 368 pages |
| Published | : | August 31st 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published August 31st 2009) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. History. Biography. Art. Autobiography. Memoir |
Narration Supposing Books The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
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.
Details Books In Favor Of The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
| Original Title: | The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss |
| ISBN: | 0374105979 (ISBN13: 9780374105976) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://us.macmillan.com/theharewithambereyes/EdmunddeWaal |
| Literary Awards: | 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) |
Rating Out Of Books The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
Ratings: 3.88 From 35947 Users | 3065 ReviewsComment On Out Of Books The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
This book is Edmund De Waal's stubbornly pursued search for the history of a branch of his own family, namely the Jewish-Ukrainian Ephrussi. The starting point for his quest is the collection of 264 small Japanese objects that he inherited from a great-uncle. They are netsukes, small figures made from the most diverse materials (wood, ivory, amber, etc) which - as befits Japanese art tradition - express a brief moment in the life of those figures. For De Waal it is mainly the material aspect,My father was one of those people who always found things on the ground. Maybe it came from being over 6' tall, but he was always looking at where he was walking. He'd find money in parking lots but mostly what he found were rocks. When he would go hunting with my brother, he would find little stones that he would pick up and bring home. They were never anything special, no gems or geological artifacts, just stones that felt good in the hand. He'd slip them into his pocket, reaching in
The concept of tracing the history of a rich Jewish bankers family through the vicissitudes of a collection of Japanese miniature sculptures, is original and interesting. The beginning of the book is a bit slow, but it then comes to life with fascinating descriptions of the Ephrussi in Paris during Impressionism or in Vienna during the first part of the 20th century, ending with dramatic events surrounding the Austrian Anschluss into the German Reich.And yet it is hard to feel much sympathy
After the first few pages I was wondering whether this wa going to be one I would have to wade through as a noble act of bookclub fidelity. However, its like a walk up a mountain where you are straining up a hill, panting and feeling its your duty and then suddenly you brow the hill and there opening out before you is this great vista and you get a second wind and off you go at a cracking pace. This is exactly what happened with this really clever concept. Edmund de Waal, a potter, traces the
I started out giving Hare with Amber Eyes four stars, but as it settled in, I decided to up it to five stars. This is a very special book de Waal approaches his extraordinary family history as the artist he is, art, paintings, and especially decorative objects and architecture are all infused with his extraordinary visual and tactile sense. I dont use the word extraordinary lightly. From the story's beginnings in the shtetl of Berdishev (where the Ukraine meets Poland not far from the
This was a fascinating and heartbreaking story. The author is inspired to take a deep look into his familys history after seeing the netsuke collection in his great-uncles house in Japan. Acquired in 19th century France, they are later transferred to Vienna as a wedding gift. The authors extremely wealthy Jewish family is targeted by the Nazis in WWII and most of the family fortune is lost. Except for the netsuke, which are bravely saved by the family maid and returned to the family after the
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