The Hare with Amber Eyes

A Hidden Inheritance

By: Edmund de Waal

Narrated by: Michael Maloney

Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in 19th-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.

©2010 Edmund de Waal (P)2011 Macmillan Audio

The hare with amber eyes

Wonderful story about wandering and still connecting, wars and still keeping and having the art collections , things and storied that pass between generations

totally fascinating

This is an amazing history of the very distinguished Ephrussi family written from the 'inside' by a member of the family. If books can be said to have a 'forth wall', de Waal breaks it, describing his own own interactions with the places and people in his history as well as the history itself. The netsuke, tiny Japanese figures often made of ivory, provide the structure around which the events unfold and give the book its title. The stories of several generations of Ephrussis, offer unique insights into history. The anti-semitism of late 19th Century Paris revealed by Charles' interactions with Degas and Renoir, The disbelief of the Vienna branch of the family as Hitler loomed. The comforts a rich and cultured uncle could enjoy in post-war Japan,

This is a wonderful book and a delight to listen to. The exhibit at The Jewish Museum in New York City is the perfect compliment to the book - all the netsuke are there, as are paintings the family collected, family portraits, and contemporary photographs of spectacular former Ephrussi homes.

One of the best books I've ever read

Beautifully written, moving, and important. A stunning piece of history and a work of art in itself. I didn't want it to end.

Stunning Story and Narration

What did you love best about The Hare with Amber Eyes?

When I heard about this book, my son was working on a family history project at school and we had just discovered that his grandmother had squirrelled away a family tree that dated back to 1460. Fascinated by seeing names of 17 generations and not knowing anything about them, I was drawn to The Hare with the Amber Eyes.

You won't be disappointed! This book is beautifully written, lyrical, moving. Michael Maloney's narration is perfect, his cadence enhancing the natural rhythm of the writing. It is a personal story of a family but it is also a story of this family's place in time and history, a story of the world outside the family and how events shaped the legacy and affected every individual that came before Edmund. The Hare with the Amber Eyes is one of the best books that I have read or listened to in the last 12 months. I highly recommend it.

What did you like best about this story?

The writing and the narration.

Have you listened to any of Michael Maloney???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

I absolutely loved it!

Any additional comments?

This is an amazing book on multiple levels. It is the 160 year story of a family. For the attention to detail and the use of research and imagination the author used to create the book, it is worth it alone. But it is far more. The history of that family, from Poland to Ukraine to Paris and Vienna, to Tokyo and London and America, and the world events that affected them, is a great way to appreciate how the macro affects the micro.

But there is even more. The book is also a meditation on memory, on the importance of what the psychoanalyst Winnicott called "transitional objects," external things that stand for emotions and people. The netsuke (pronounced net -sue-key by the reader and net'sky by the author in the podcast post-script) stands for an era, a variety of persons, the Jews of Europe, and the artist as creator.

I highly recommend this book, especially in the spoken form. The performance is excellent and adds to the excitement of the story. However, after I listened to the audio version I went out and bought the illustrated version of the hard cover book. The quality of that volume is also outstanding and the illustrations are a great supplement to the audio.

What a fascinating and beautifully written story

The narrator of this book had such a difficult job because there were so many various foreign words to overcome, but he did his job perfectly--as if he knows German, French and Japanese himself.
The lyrical writing is really beautiful and the meditation on the nature of family, history and art makes this book memorable. It builds up to the climax of what we all know will happen to Jews of Europe, but the set up is masterful and conjures up a bygone era so masterfully.
I recommend looking at the book too because there is a really useful family tree in the front of it that is quite helpful. There are also photos that the author included of his family and they help explain the story.
Kudos to Michael Maloney, who is a wonderful narrator.

surprisingly good story

This was the best narrator I've ever listened to. The story was well written and kept me interested all the way to the end. Wow what a family story.

interesting tale of vast wealth and losses

really well written book about a kind of quest that only defines itself as the tale unfolds. the vast riches of this banking family built upon their grain empire in Odessa Ukraine ended up as poverty as the Nazis confiscated virtually everything they owned in 20th century Vienna. the treasure that was saved and passed down included the title figurine. worth reading/listening although it started slowly it became fully engrossing

A Profound Tragedy Told with Consummate Literary S

Every once in a while, I come across a book that has a surprising impact on me, and judging by the reviews it has received, its international best-seller status, and the number of literary prizes it has been awarded, I’m far from being alone in my appreciation of “The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss,” by Edmund de Waal. This book can be read on many levels, to wit, (1) a family history of a fabulously wealthy European merchant banking Jewish family from 1870 to after WWII, (2) a social history of Russia, Austria and France, (3) an artistic and literary history of that same period, (4) a political history, (5) a guide to certain aspects of Japanese art, (6) a history of the introduction and acceptance of Japanese art into European culture, and (5) a compendium of the introduction and insidiousness of European anti-Semitism and its culmination in the rise of Nazism and the holocaust. A distinguishing feature of “The Hare with Amber Eyes” is its use of a collection of Japanese netsuke, wood and ivory carvings no bigger than a matchbox, as a literary device with which the author traces the travels of the collection in the possession of the Ephrussis family through 150 years of history. The author, himself an Ephrussis descendant, is a famous English ceramicist, and this book will establish him as a practitioner of literary English of the highest artistic order. “The Hare with Amber Eyes” tells a profound tragedy, a testament to the depravity of mankind. I find nothing optimistic in it, but others do. I suspect that what a reader has to say about this tale has as much to do about the nature of the reader, his or her life experiences and philosophy, as it has to do with the book itself, but, surely, this is a sign of good literature. As tragic as this history is, the book is not a downer, nor is it depressing. Rather, it depicts a tragedy in the classic sense, one that elevates the appreciation of life. The narrator is excellent.

Family dynasty faces tumultuous European world

De Waal takes you deeply into this family (his family), generation after generation, so that not only do you care about individuals, but you understand how they originated their enormous wealth (in Russia), how they lived in the upper classes of European society, and how they were affected by 20th-century anti-semitism --- all this "threaded" by a collection of netsuke. Brilliant!