View basket and checkout
Events Subscriptions Vouchers Contact

House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family

by Hadley Freeman

Paperback £9.99
Published 4th March 2021
You’ll be able to choose Delivery or Click & Collect after you enter your address.
UK postage is £2.95, or free for orders over £60.

Available
online

Available
in Bath

Available
in Edinburgh

Available to order
in Ely

Available
in St Andrews

Description

The Sunday Times bestseller

‘An utterly engrossing book’ Nigella Lawson

‘Remarkable and gripping’ Edmund de Waal

‘A near-perfect study of Jewish identity in the 20th century … I don’t hesitate to call it a masterpiece’ Telegraph

After her grandmother died, Hadley Freeman travelled to her apartment to try and make sense of a woman she’d never really known. Sala Glass was a European expat in America – defiantly clinging to her French influences, famously reserved, fashionable to the end – yet to Hadley much of her life remained a mystery. Sala’s experience of surviving one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history was never spoken about.

When Hadley found a shoebox filled with her grandmother’s treasured belongings, it started a decade-long quest to find out their haunting significance and to dig deep into the extraordinary lives of Sala and her three brothers. The search takes Hadley from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island and to Auschwitz.

By piecing together letters, photos and an unpublished memoir, Hadley brings to life the full story of the Glass siblings for the first time: Alex’s past as a fashion couturier and friend of Dior and Chagall; trusting and brave Jacques, a fierce patriot for his adopted country; and the brilliant Henri who hid in occupied France – each of them made extraordinary bids for survival during the Second World War. And alongside her great-uncles’ extraordinary acts of courage in Vichy France, Hadley discovers her grandmother’s equally heroic but more private form of female self-sacrifice.

A moving memoir following the Glass siblings throughout the course of the twentieth-century as they each make their own bid for survival, House of Glass explores assimilation, identity and home – issues that are deeply relevant today.

Details

House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family
by Hadley Freeman

ISBN
9780008322663

Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers

Binding
Paperback

Publication date
March 4, 2021

Dimensions
19.8cm x 12.9cm x 2.9cm