I know your street rather well.
Count Moïse de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal's forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his bestselling memoir
The Hare with Amber Eyes. Edmund de Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and uncovers new layers to the family story.
I was deeply moved... De Waal has found a way to meditate on exile, migration and polarisation that feels painfully relevant
This is
a marvellous book, elegant, tender, loving, appreciative, disturbing, a reminder of both the fragility and resilience of high culture, indeed civilisation
De Waal is a writer of grace and restlessly enquiring intelligence, and
Letters to Camondo succeeds admirably...
Edmund de Waal's beautiful book opens a window onto an entire lost worldDe Waal's sentences like to take the historical weight of the objects he describes...
An unforgettable bookIt will make you think differently about trunks in the attic and it will make you read old letters with new eyes
Consistently illuminating... excellently illustrated... De Waal's excavation of the meanings of assimilation is
considered, compassionate and appreciative of its costs... he is a wise guide to people and things that are dispersed and are collected...
This book is a wonderful tribute to a family and to an ideaMore than chronicling the [Camondo] family's splendor and tragic end, de Waal has created a deeply hued tapestry of a lost time and a poetic meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile consolation of art... A radiant family history.
Letters to Camondo immerses you in another age - one as sharply torn with rifts and bigotry, political uncertainty and changing fortunes as our own - but also a time of grace and the deliberate cultivation of pleasure...
de Waal creates a dazzling picture of what it means to live graciouslyLetters to Camondo... is
subtle and thoughtful and nuanced and quiet. It is demanding but rewarding. It will make you think differently about trunks in the attic and it will make you read old letters with new eyes
I was deeply moved... [de Waal] has found a way to meditate on exile, migration and polarisation that feels
painfully relevantThis is a marvellous book, elegant, tender, loving, appreciative, disturbing, a reminder of both the fragility and resilience of high culture, indeed civilisationA slim elegant volume of beautifully written letters
Letters to Camondo tells de Waal's version of the Camondo story... layers of memories, hopes, fears embedded in the Musée Camondo brought alive...remarkable
Moving... beautifully produced... I visited the Musee Nissim de Camondo some dozen years ago. Now I long to go back
De Waal's ability to conjure up the personality of a character long dead through his possessions is a joy... A moving picture of the Jewish condition in Europe, always ready for flight once the scapegoating begins again, is made starkly apparent... In de Waal's hands objects stand for much bigger truths, of questions of loss and injustice
Edmund de Waal is an artist whose porcelain is exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. His bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, won the RSL Ondaatje prize and the Costa Biography Award and in 2015 he was awarded the Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction by Yale University. The White Road, a journey into the history of porcelain, was published in 2015. He lives in London with his family.
www.edmunddewaal.com