Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal book review Ian Thomson
When is a life worth telling? 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.
Ten years on from
The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal turns his careful, exacting gaze on the life and times of the Count de Camondo, a scion of a Constantinople banking family known as the “Rothschilds of the East”. Having left Constantinople as a child, in 1910 Moïse de Camondo designed for himself and began to fill an exquisite townhouse in Paris with the 18th century decorative art he so loved: Buffon Sèvres dinner tureens, Louis XVI chaises, ormolu clocks, gauzy Aubusson tapestries, diamond-patterned marquetry