Letters to Camondo

By: Edmund de Waal

Narrated by: Edmund de Waal

Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year

"With deep appreciation for Camondo's generosity and taste, de Waal takes listeners on a journey they won't forget." (AudioFile Magazine)

This program is read by the author

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo

Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French 18th-century art.

The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople, “the Rothschilds of the East", who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists, art collectors, and fixtures of Belle Époque high society, as well as being targets of antisemitism - much like de Waal's relations, the Ephrussi family, to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son, Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War, the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually, the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis.

After de Waal, one of the world’s greatest ceramic artists, was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house, he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation, melancholy, family, art, the vicissitudes of history, and the value of memory.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©2021 Edmund de Waal (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Gorgeous and haunting

This book of 58 letters to the author’s distant relative is about belonging, loss and betrayal. I won’t forget it anytime soon.

Exquisite and subtle

Edmund Dr Wall's narration carries the depth of feeling in every word with which he frames his family's history and its profound betrayal by the nation they honored. How to memorialize an absence? A painful story exquisitely written.

Outstanding reading

if the book is fantastic, being able to listen by Edmund de Waal is a true gift!

Fantastic book

Another fantastic book by de waal. Performance could be improved by including a native french speaker or the brilliant narrator of the hare with amber eyes.

Poetic, beautiful, moving

I didn’t want this book to end. It is powerfully written. Tightly edited - no wasteful words. I simply loved it.

Extraordinary journey

De Waal triumphs again. A cleverly structured investigation into the meaning of art collecting and cultural achievement, interwoven with one Jewish family’s specific story over a half century, from the highest echelons of Parisian society into the Holocaust. A very personal perspective which gives face to social upheaval, in a tightly and concisely written format. The author’s delivery in narration is perfectly attuned.

Enjoyed the French in the performance

Story well told with relevant history during the time period. I learned much about France and Paris

Lovely and poignant

This is a “follow one” only in one sense really to Edmond dwells magnificent book “the hair with the amber eyes