Bringing Books to the People

Bringing Books to the People
The Book Bus

Jul 28, 2012

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Treasure by Edmund de Waal


Here's a book disguised as a book about a tiny white ceramic rabbit which is actually about THE ENTIRE WORLD. Well, ish. 

Edmund de Waal is, apparently, a well famous potter. I guess however famous you are for potting (?) I'm going to be far too philistine to have ever heard of you. But, be that as it may, what I'm getting at here is that despite having put together a truly incredible, captivating book, that's not even his real job. But then, I guess a potter writing a book about a tiny white ceramic rabbit makes, I guess, more sense than a carpenter doing it.

This book charts the journey of a set of these tiny objects - Japanese netsuke - from where Edmund's distant relative bought them in Paris in the 1870s to Edmund's London home today. So what? So what?! These little guys - essentially a really old Japanese belt keepers - accompany a Russian Jewish family through Paris, Vienna, Czechoslovakia, back to Japan and then onto London, taking in some of the most vitriolic anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish sentiment, seeing the rise and fall of a fortune, witnessing incredible wealth, indecipherable suffering and cataclysmic change. They are toys, curiosities, emblems, talismans, treasures.

Also, there's a family tree in the front, and I really like that junk.

You need to be able to devote yourself to this a bit - it's non-fiction with people and places and names and events you're going to want to keep track of - but it's absolutely worth it.

1 comment:

  1. I think we must have been reading this book at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. A bit of Book Bus ESP, non?

    This book is so impressive - for it's seemingly impossible ambitions and how it actually achieves them. It's autobiographical, with a sense of fiction, about the journey of people alongside their possessions. The phrase 'everything has a story' comes to mind, and it makes me think of the little things we keep from our parents and grandparents, and why we keep them - even if we don't know their full stories.

    Yes, it was dry in parts, and hard to follow - but well worth the investment I have to agree.

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