The White Road
Journey into an Obsession
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Narrated by:
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Michael Maloney
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By:
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Edmund de Waal
About this listen
An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted. Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and best-selling international sensation,The Hare with the Amber Eyes.
In The White Road, best-selling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold". A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than 40 years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted - and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills" - sites in China, Germany, and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history.
Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.
©2015 Edmund de Waal (P)2015 Random House AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. Iberia is Michener’s enduring nonfiction tribute to his cherished second home. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he came to know, where the congeniality of living souls is thrust against the dark weight of history.
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Michener's Masterpiece
- By ahusmc on 09-14-17
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The Garden of Evening Mists
- By: Tan Twan Eng
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp.
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The best
- By Susan Gardner Bowers on 03-11-13
By: Tan Twan Eng
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Travels in Siberia
- By: Ian Frazier
- Narrated by: Ian Frazier
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind....
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I Loved This Book
- By Sara on 01-05-14
By: Ian Frazier
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The Marches
- A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland
- By: Rory Stewart
- Narrated by: Rory Stewart
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Ten years after the walk across Central Asia and Afghanistan that he memorialized in The Places in Between, Rory Stewart set out on a new journey, traversing a thousand miles between England and Scotland. Stewart was raised along the border of the two countries, the frontier taking on poignant significance in his understanding of what it means to be both Scottish and English, of his relationship with his father, who's lived on this land his whole life, and of his ties to the rich history and culture of the region.
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Uneven and unexpected, still worth it.
- By Nassir on 04-29-17
By: Rory Stewart
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Turn Right at Machu Picchu
- Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
- By: Mark Adams
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Writer for the New York Times and GQ, Mark Adams is also the acclaimed author of Mr. America. In this fascinating travelogue, Adams follows in the controversial footsteps of Hiram Bingham III, who’s been both lionized and vilified for his discovery of the famed Lost City in 1911—but which reputation is justified?
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Spellbounding, exceptional vocals
- By KLewis on 09-19-15
By: Mark Adams
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The Art of Travel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.
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Dull, suggestions for better alternatives
- By J. Natael on 08-07-13
By: Alain de Botton
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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The Eight
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Neville
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 25 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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New York City, 1972: A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis is also a computer expert for a Big Eight accounting firm. Before heading off to a new assignment in Algeria, Cat has her palm read by a fortune-teller. The woman warns Cat of danger. Then an antiques dealer approaches Cat with a mysterious offer: He has an anonymous client who is trying to collect the pieces of an ancient chess service, purported to be in Algeria. If Cat can bring the pieces back, there will be a generous reward.
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Best Plot-Driven Novel I've Ever Read
- By Tango on 09-08-13
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The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
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turn your watch back 70 years
- By Andy on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
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Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
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Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
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The Map That Changed the World
- William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.
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Who knew rocks could be so deceptive?
- By Jody R. Nathan on 11-09-04
By: Simon Winchester
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The City of Falling Angels
- By: John Berendt
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns to give us an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
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Do Yourself a Favor and Skip This Book!
- By AUDIBLE on 10-08-05
By: John Berendt
What listeners say about The White Road
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Deby
- 05-04-23
Again, author uses words that become poetry in his descriptions.
The journey by the author is both personal and sharing. It paints a picture for the reader to see through his eyes.
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- Ari
- 06-26-20
A simply fantastic book
I very much enjoyed De Waals writing style! Working in ceramics I am already interested in the topic, so I might have enjoyed it more than some people. But, that being said, The White Road is overall a great book! 5/5 I would read it again.
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- Elizabeth
- 09-27-17
Marvelous and addictive
I am so pleased with the narrator - I immediately looked up all the other books that he has read. His voice is clear as a bell and the book itself is a delight. I would never have imagined the story of porcelain being quite so fascinating and now I find myself making my way to museums to admire their porcelain collections. I've been reading along with the physical book, which is also a treat because it's broken up into small paragraphs and divided into sections by moments of history or discovery - it's like reading a travel journal.
I will certainly be reading Edmund de Waal's other book, The Hare with Amber Eyes.
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3 people found this helpful
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- J. Darcy
- 03-15-19
Excellent journey!
I loved de Waal's journey through the history of porcelain and I'm not even a potter or collector. He travels to locations around the globe that were the epicenter of porcelain history and thoughtfully reconstructs what it might have been like, based on carefully researched articles and manuscripts. He thinks deeply on the idea of "white" as expressed in porcelain and what porcelain meant in the context of the time and place. It surprised me how much it mattered! He follows the trail of the trailblazers who invent porcelain again and again, we see fortunes rise and fall, and human nature at its best and worst. It's a fascinating journey even if you have no interest in pots at all.
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- ShambhaviG
- 02-19-22
In my mind, Michael Maloney IS Edmund de Waal
I love the story, the history, his obsession. And I’m not that big a fan of his pots. But be nevermind, the book is great.
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-08-16
Don't Give This at Christmas
What would have made The White Road better?
The "Hare" was magnetic with the draw of family, 1890s Paris, Jewish families trading grain and the artifacts of brilliant life. The White Road had no grip; no life derived from the Hare.
What could Edmund de Waal have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
History, personality, emotional investment.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointment
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