Edmund de Waal: A man of letters
In his letters, de Waal writes of identity and belonging, assimilation and difference, memorialising and letting go, and the way that objects and collections, like words on a page, can articulate the most intimate and complex thoughts and feelings.
Edmund de Waal on his family’s Holocaust nightmare
In deepest lockdown, when south London was shuttered and empty, behind a nondescript door of a former munitions factory, the potter and writer Edmund de Waal was working in a possessed frenzy of creativity.
Book of the Week
A superb, sensitive account. From Proust and Parisian riches to the horror of the Holocaust ... this companion study to The Hare With Amber Eyes is the skilfully told story of a family’s collection of art objects.
Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal’s haunting account of a Parisian collector and the fate of his Jewish family during the German occupation of France combines ghastly drama with domestic detail, in a jewel-like amalgam of history and personal reflection that absorbs from start to finish.
Magical, imaginary letters coloured with inspiration
Edmund de Waal is an archivist of a miraculously precise and poetic kind.
Mon cher Monsieur
De Waal is a deep insider writing a series of familiar and familial letters to Moïse de Camondo, addressing him as ‘Friend’, ‘Dear friend’, ‘Monsieur’, ‘Cher Monsieur’, ‘Mon cher Monsieur’ and even ‘Monsieur le Comte’. His manner is softly prowling, whether inside or outside the house and its archives; his tone is intimate, melancholic, speculative, at times whimsical.
Letters to Camondo and The House of Fragile Things
Two books offer intimate yet contrasting histories of Jewish art collectors in fin-de-siècle and early 20th-century France
Two books offer intimate yet contrasting histories of Jewish art collectors in fin-de-siècle and early 20th-century France
After Hours in the Museum
Edmund de Waal is an internationally known potter, but through investigative energy and a sense of obligation he has also become the chronicler of his Jewish ancestors... in Letters to Camondo, he explores a more distant family connection, casting the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris as a symbol of both achievement and transience.
Letters to Camondo, by Edmund de Waal
Everyone who bought, read and loved Edmund de Waal’s first book.,The Hare With Amber Eyes, will find equal interest and delight in Letters to Camondo. It is a beautiful and fascinating book, even if its last pages are painful and depressing.
The tragedy of Jewish art collectors in pre-war Paris
Three books portray a glittering, doomed world.