Super Short Summary

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal traces the journey of a collection of Japanese wood and ivory carvings called netsuke through multiple generations of the author's family, the Ephrussis, an affluent Jewish banking family in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna. The memoir explores how the netsuke managed to survive various historical upheavals, including the fall of the Ephrussi banking empire and the horrors of World War II. Topics related to World War II, antisemitism, and the Holocaust appear in the book.