The Hare With Amber Eyes

Shortly after its publication last year, writer Anita Brookner described Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes as “the best book of the year’’. Frances Wilson told Sunday Times readers, “You have in your hands a masterpiece’’, while author Colm Toibin, in his review in The Irish Times, said it was “an exquisitely described search for a lost family and a lost time’’.

Acclaimed British potter Edmund de Waal inherits his great uncle Iggie’s netsuke collection. This group of 264 little Japanese wood and ivory carvings, first acquired from a Parisian dealer’s rooms in the 1870s by a distant relative, becomes the catalyst for de Waal’s inquiry into his father’s family.

The hare with amber eyes, the rat curled up asleep, the young boy with the samuri sword – these and all the other miniature carvings bewitch de Waal.

“I want to know what the relationship has been between this wooden object that I am rolling between my fingers – hard, tricky and Japanese – and where it has been,’’ he writes. His journey to the past begins. As a ceramicist, de Waal creates objects for people to keep. The works take on their own life, but it is usually the story of those who acquire them, rather than stories of the works, that are passed on through generations.

In his award-winning book, the 40-something de Waal places the netsuke at the centre of his research. It is a strategy that works.

Originally from Russia, the Ephrussi family became one of 19th-century Europe’s most successful and respected banking outfits. Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of de Waal’s grandfather, became an art writer, collector and frequent attendee of Parisian salons. In the 1870s Charles purchases 264 netsuke and a black-lacquered vitrine in which to store them, and they become a talking point of his respected art collection.

Charles is not immune to the increasingly menacing anti-Semitic mood starting to pervade French society. Prosperous Jewish banking families in particular become convenient targets for anger and hatred. This black cloud follows the netsuke to Vienna when they become Charles’ wedding gift to his cousin Viktor and his new wife Emmy.

De Waal’s handling of Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938 and its impact on the Ephrussi family may be viewed as yet another tragic Holocaust story in which property is confiscated, artworks are stolen, families are separated and Jews are murdered.

But by now, de Waal’s forensic research, his travels to Paris and Vienna, his artist’s skills of observation and empathy have ensured that we, too, are living the moment.

I won’t give anything away, nor explain how the netsuke collection is saved. But I’m quite certain you will romp through the final chapters and possibly shed some tears, as de Waal did.