In his bestseller “The Hare with the Amber Eyes”, the writer and ceramicist Edmund de Waal retraces the journey of his Jewish family and his art collection from the end of the 19th century to the 21st. The book combines history and memory with a sort of object-oriented ontology, drawing parallels between the post-WWII Jewish diaspora and the scattered possessions of the Ephrussi family (many of which were plundered by the Nazis). It begins when the author inherits a collection of Japanese netsuke, sculpted palm-sized sculptures from the Edo period that were with his Ephrussi parents for generations. “I want...