Kutchinsky's Egg

What if your father had a dream so immense it led to his downfall? Would you want to know the truth?

When she was eleven years old, Serena Kutchinsky’s father Paul was gripped by a wild idea. The son of generations of jewellers and heir to the legendary House of Kutchinsky, he wanted to make something bigger and more beautiful than anything that had come before him. It was to be the largest, most lavish, most expensive jewelled egg in the world.

Standing two-feet tall, made of solid gold, dripping with rare pink diamonds and housing a tiny enamelled library, his creation was truly astonishing. The problem was: nobody would buy it. The House of Kutchinsky collapsed, Paul’s marriage fell apart – and within ten years he was dead. The egg was seized by its creditors and disappeared without a trace.

For thirty years, its location remained a mystery, until it began to obsess Serena, too. Why did her father risk everything for this outlandish creation, and where in the world was it – valued by now at £30 million? Intent on finding answers, she set out on a journey that begins in London’s East End – with the arrival of her great, great grandparents as Jewish immigrants from Poland – and takes her to the most unexpected of places. To the other side of the world, and to a new understanding of her father, her childhood and herself.

Kutchinsky’s Egg is a stunning story of obsession and lost glamour, fathers and daughters, for readers of The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal.