This is the story of Edmund de Waal’s encounter in Tokyo with his great-uncle and his fascinating collection of netsuke – small ivory and wooden carved figures which, after his great-uncle’s death in 1994 de Waal inherited.  His mission to learn more of their origins became an unravelling of his own family’s recent history. How did his great-uncle collect these valuable objects? Why had he come to live in Japan after an Austrian childhood? What happened to the rest of the family? This is a truly original memoir, in elegant and precise prose.