We earn a commission if you buy through these links. Learn more
The Hare with Amber Eyes (Illustrated Edition)
A potter traces a small collection of Japanese carvings back through a wealthy Jewish family's losses, showing how objects carry memory where documents fall silent.
What It's About
The Hare with Amber Eyes is a family memoir built around 264 netsuke, tiny carved toggles from Japan that Edmund de Waal inherited from his great-uncle Iggie. Following the carvings from Odessa to Paris, Vienna and Tokyo, the book traces the Ephrussi family, a banking household whose fortunes rose across Europe and were then stripped away under Nazi rule in Vienna.
De Waal is a ceramicist, and he writes like someone who handles objects for a living. He moves between the netsuke, the places they passed through, and his own visits to the people and sites involved, rather than telling the story in strict chronological order. He is open about what the surviving records cannot tell him, and he speculates carefully instead of filling gaps with invention.
Reading it is quiet, reflective and unhurried. Expect meditative prose and a slow build of atmosphere rather than plot momentum. The illustrated edition adds photographs of the netsuke and images from the family archive, which suits a book so concerned with physical things and makes the carvings easier to picture as you read.
Read this if you…
- are drawn to family histories that unfold through objects rather than dramatic events
- enjoy reflective, lyrical nonfiction that treats the past carefully and admits uncertainty
- are interested in European Jewish history between the wars and the Nazi seizure of property
Skip it if you…
- want a fast-paced narrative with a clear plot and steady momentum
- prefer history that stays strictly at the level of documented, verifiable fact
Key Ideas
- 1
Objects that outlast people and paper
The netsuke survived where letters, property and many family members did not. De Waal uses them as a thread through the century, asking what an object remembers when people cannot. His argument is that small possessions can hold more continuity than official histories, and that inheritance is partly a matter of looking after things others once handled.
- 2
Wealth, assimilation and sudden loss
The Ephrussi story shows how a cosmopolitan Jewish family built status in several cities and believed it belonged in them. The book traces how that position collapsed quickly after the Anschluss, when property was seized and relatives scattered. It is less a sweeping history than a close look at how one family lived through that reversal.
- 3
Writing honestly about gaps
De Waal does not pretend to know everything. He marks where evidence runs out and where he is imagining a scene, which makes the book feel trustworthy. Readers who care about the ethics of memoir and historical writing will find this restraint one of its most instructive features.
- 4
Looking closely at small things
The book is also an education in attention. De Waal describes the carvings with a maker's eye for surface, weight and wear, and this slow looking becomes a method. Small, precise observation carries as much emotional weight in the book as the large events around it.
Limitations
Some readers find the book too introspective, with long passages about the author's own feelings and reflections that slow the family story. Its historical sections rely partly on reconstruction and inference, which is honest but can feel thin where records are scarce. The vantage point is that of a relatively privileged descendant, and the book does not try to speak for the wider communities its characters came from. The Japanese strand is less developed than the European one. Those who want a comprehensive history of the Ephrussi or of the netsuke trade will need to look elsewhere.
Questions Readers Ask
- Is the illustrated edition different from the standard edition?
- The core story and writing are the same. The illustrated edition adds photographs of the netsuke and images from the de Waal family archive, which helps if you want to see the carvings and the people involved. If you already own the standard edition or only want the narrative, it is not essential.
- Is The Hare with Amber Eyes about the Holocaust?
- It deals with the Holocaust as it affected one Jewish family in Vienna, including the seizure of their property after 1938 and the dispersal of relatives. It is not a general account of the Holocaust. The focus stays on one family and the objects that survived them.
- Published
- 2012
- ISBN
- 9780374709600
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Category
- Biographies
Book details and cover from Google Books.
Ready to read The Hare with Amber Eyes (Illustrated Edition)?
Get your copy on Amazon, or listen to it on Audible. We earn a commission if you buy through these links.