Description

From the author of the bestselling phenomenon The Hare with Amber Eyes

As you may have guessed by now, I am not in your house by accident. I know your street rather well.

The Camondos lived just a few doors away from Edmund de Waal’s forebears. Like de Waal’s family, they were part of belle epoque high society. They were also targets of anti-Semitism.

Count Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house filled with art for his son to inherit. Over a century later, de Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and, in a haunting series of letters addressed to Camondo, he tells us what happened next.

‘Illuminating… A wonderful tribute to a family and to an idea’ Guardian

‘Letters to Camondo immerses you in another age… Dazzling’ Financial Times

Publisher Review

I was deeply moved... De Waal has found a way to meditate on exile, migration and polarisation that feels painfully relevant * Sunday Times * This is a marvellous book, elegant, tender, loving, appreciative, disturbing, a reminder of both the fragility and resilience of high culture, indeed civilisation * Scotsman * 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 world * Evening Standard * De Waal's sentences like to take the historical weight of the objects he describes... An unforgettable book * Observer * It will make you think differently about trunks in the attic and it will make you read old letters with new eyes * The Times *