The White Road

** A Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller **"Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first"A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white.Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times. In these intimate and compelling encounters with the people and landscapes who made porcelain, Edmund de Waal enriches his understanding of this rare material, the 'white gold' he has worked with for decades.** Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 **

Report

Sweeping in scope ... intimate in detail ... The White Road is a mesmirising and finely wrought work. It is also a cautionary tale about the price of beauty pursued at any cost. Ekow Eshun Independent on Sunday

Product details

• Authors: Edmund de Waal, Edmund de Waal
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.05.2016
• EAN: 9780099575986
• ISBN: 978-0-09-957598-6
• No. of pages: 416
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 30 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Non-fiction book > Art, literature > Plastic arts; China, TRAVEL / Essays & Travelogues, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, HISTORY / Europe / General, Expeditions, HISTORY / Social History, Ceramic arts, pottery, glass, Memoirs, Expeditions: popular accounts, History of Art, East Asia, Far East, Art styles not defined by date, Oriental art, Ceramics, mosaic and glass: artworks