House of Glass

By Hadley Freeman,

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

Book 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…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked House of Glass as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A beautifully written and meticulously researched family memoir that made me question what I would have done to survive the turbulence and brutality of the Nazi era. Themes of antisemitism and identity continue to haunt four siblings - Jehuda, Jacob, Sender, and Sala - as they leave Poland behind to establish new lives as Alex, Jacques, Henri, and Sara in Paris.

An irresistible and complex personal story that I would happily reread because I devoured this page turner too quickly! At the heart of it all is Sara, the author’s mysterious, glamorous, melancholy grandmother and a shoebox of her treasured…

I met Hadley Freeman the year before she published her well-researched, well-written recounting of her French-Jewish family history. A Guardian columnist at the time who now writes for The Sunday Times, she interviewed me about my forthcoming documentary feature, Cojot, which follows a French Holocaust survivor (Michel Cojot) on a quest to kill his father’s Nazi executioner. Cojot’s best friend was Freeman’s dad. So, when House of Glass came out, I dove right in, hoping to learn more about Ron Freeman. This nonfiction book—which is easy to read yet, like many stories that encompass the Holocaust, hard to fathom—gave…

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