{"product_id":"how-to-begin-2","title":"How to Begin","description":"'Enchanting, illuminating and tender' - Nigel SlaterElisabeth [de Waal]'s letters, with their ardour, impatience and melodrama, are wonderfully alive. [Edmund de Waal's] argument about quiet perseverance and mentorship emerges with subtle force - Sunday Times'Charming and heartfelt... a pleasure to read' - Literary Review'I believe you can live in a book of poems'A book about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a startling rediscovery in Edmund de Waal's family archives - letters between his grandmother and the charismatic poet Rainer Maria Rilke** With letters translated from the German by prizewinning translator, Karen Leeder **This is a story about how to begin.In 1921, Elisabeth Ephrussi writes a letter to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She too is a poet, or an aspiring one - a young law student in Vienna just beginning her creative life. To her surprise, Rilke writes back with advice. A five-year correspondence follows, an exchange of lyrical and exhortatory letters alongside books, translations, poems in manuscript. They never meet.Fifty years later, Elisabeth's grandson, Edmund de Waal, wants to be a poet and a potter. He sends her his own poetry, and she responds with guidance and Rilke's Duino Elegies.How to Begin follows Edmund's journey as an artist. This is a book about failure, about starting again, about apprenticeship and asking for and then disregarding advice, about working out ways to keep going when you don't know how.It is a moving, intergenerational story about the traces of memory within a family, and a deeply personal reflection on how we learn resilience with the support of others. It is for any reader starting out, seeking the permission to begin.","brand":"Random House UK Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57867223957830,"sku":"9781784746704","price":21.04,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0852\/3081\/3510\/files\/c0815ed5195375ac727a79a5b1fed27a81f058208a4f43c61f4233df0a6e4da0.jpg?v=1794451324","url":"https:\/\/www.averdo.com\/products\/how-to-begin-2","provider":"Averdo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}