Like the ancient Greeks who were outnumbered by Persian hordes at the battle of Thermopylae, a motley gathering of British and Indian troops was almost overpowered at Kohima, but managed to resist the Japanese forces intent on taking India. Only a regiment, not a whole division, of Japanese soldiers was expected, and the struggle was bitter and prolonged.
"Fatigue was the greatest danger," writes Fergal Keane in this comprehensive, moving, very fair account. Unlike the Greeks, the Allied troops were not betrayed. "Road of bones" was the name given to the trail of death that followed the Japanese troops retreating into Burma.
The inherited gift of a substantial collection of netsuke inspired the potter and ceramics expert Edmund de Waal to find out where they came from, and how they were passed on. The decorative toggles of wood and ivory, as much as two centuries old, had been bought first by a wealthy ancestor in France. This marvelous book recounts not only the 19th-century fad for Japonaiserie, but traces the family's origins in Russia, their residence across Europe, and all the triumphs and tragedies involved. It is a Proustian journey of retrieval, an aesthetics of memory and touch, and much else besides.