264 Netsuke, Japanese miniature carvings made of wood and ivory, are displayed in the cabinet of British potter Edmund de Waal, a descendant of the Jewish Ephrussi family from Odessa. This memoir tells the story of how they arrived there. From the Paris of the Belle Époque, the collection moved to Vienna at the turn of the century, and finally from Tokyo to London in the 1950s. The Ephrussis, once as influential and wealthy as the Rothschilds, experienced a decline with the annexation in 1938; their entire fortune fell victim to Aryanization. Only the Netsuke were saved, each one individually, in the apron of the maid Anna. A family chronicle that reflects European history over the last one hundred and fifty years, a cabinet of curiosities, a brilliantly written exploration of ownership and loss, the life of objects, and the persistence of memory.