Hello Kind Reader,
Just a quick note that I've registered this book at BookCrossing.com, so that I can keep up on where it goes, who reads it, and what they thought of it. Please visit www.BookCrossing.com to make a quick journal entry, then pass the book along to someone else who will appreciate it. We can all track this book's journey and the lives it touches forever more!
Thank You!

Please read, enjoy this book and pass it on. Share the love of reading!

Please let me know if you've found this book on www.bookcrossing.com

I read a review of this book a couple of years ago, and have wanted to read it ever since, so I couldn't resist taking it from the table at the Dublin Convention. Added to Mount TBR.

Read in July/August 2014. I absolutely loved this book! So much so that I enthused about it on Facebook and didn't actually write a review on Goodreads. Somewhere I undoubtedly have some notes I made to make my review sound more intellectual, but until they resurface, this is what I remember.

The netsuke failed to inspire me, but the story of the family was wonderfully-told. The family, scattered to the four winds by WWII, would have been hard put to travel as far and wide with so few restrictions if they had been refugees now. Would they have been camping out in the sand dunes near Calais hoping to get through customs in the back of a lorry to sneak into England? Or stuck in a temporary refugee camp in another European country, hoping the country would take pity on them and give them official refugee status? We'll forget for the sake of argument the ease of crossing borders in the Schengen area as an EU citizen because if you don't have any way of supporting yourself in Europe, you can't go wherever you want to live, and if you were a Jew in Nazi Europe, the only way to get away was to run to the UK or the US. Try doing that nowadays!

Of course, when I was reading this book, the refugee situation hadn't yet turned into a real crisis, so I was more concerned with enjoying the tales of Edmund de Waal's ancestors'lives, with the wonderful descriptions of sumptuous buildings and exclusive lifestyles. What brought it to life even more was a visit to Turin just after I had finished reading the book. Visiting the royal palace and peering into the courtyards and windows of buildings from the same period as those described in The Hare With Amber Eyes took it all to a different level. Marvellous!

To be edited later.
This book has been released as part of the following BookCrossing challenges:
- The Ultimate Challenge - read and release books, with extra points for a monthly theme
- Reduce Mount TBR (To Be Read) - read and release books on the TBR list since before the end of 2014. My reading goal is 36 books.
- 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge. 2015 goal: 15.

This book ended up with me. I'm interested in the Orient and my eye was drawn to the 'netsuke' part, something I never heared about.
Will give it a try and get back to you with what I think about it :-)