An Evening with Edmund de Waal
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Village Books Dulwich About
In 1921, Elisabeth Ephrussi writes a letter to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She too is a poet, or an aspiring one – a young law student in Vienna just beginning her creative life. To her surprise, Rilke writes back with advice. A five-year correspondence follows, an exchange of lyrical and exhortatory letters alongside books, translations, poems in manuscript. They never meet.
Fifty years later, Elisabeth’s grandson, Edmund de Waal, wants to be a poet and a potter. He sends her his own poetry, and she responds with guidance and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.
How to Begin follows Edmund’s journey as an artist. This is a book about failure, about starting again, about apprenticeship and asking for and then disregarding advice, about working out ways to keep going when you don’t know how.
It is a moving, intergenerational story about the traces of memory within a family, and a deeply personal reflection on how we learn resilience with the support of others. It is for any reader starting out, seeking the permission to begin.
Edmund de Waal is a contemporary artist, potter and author. His family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes won the Costa Biography Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and has sold over a million copies worldwide. The White Road, a journey into the history of porcelain, was followed by the Sunday Times-bestselling Letters to Camondo.