Letters to Camondo

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

Consistently illuminating... excellently illustrated... De Waal's excavation of the meanings of assimilation is considered, compassionate and appreciative of its costs... he is a wise guide to people and things that are dispersed and are collected... This book is a wonderful tribute to a family and to an idea

Nicholas Wroe, Guardian

More than chronicling the [Camondo] family's splendor and tragic end, de Waal has created a deeply hued tapestry of a lost time and a poetic meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile consolation of art... A radiant family history.

Kirkus

Letters to Camondo immerses you in another age - one as sharply torn with rifts and bigotry, political uncertainty and changing fortunes as our own - but also a time of grace and the deliberate cultivation of pleasure... de Waal creates a dazzling picture of what it means to live graciously

Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times

Letters to Camondo... is subtle and thoughtful and nuanced and quiet. It is demanding but rewarding. It will make you think differently about trunks in the attic and it will make you read old letters with new eyes

Laura Freeman, The Times

I was deeply moved... [de Waal] has found a way to meditate on exile, migration and polarisation that feels painfully relevant

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times