Kutchinsky's Egg

A gorgeous, heart-stopping memoir about the author's search for the object that consumed her father's dreams - and spelled her family's downfall

When she was eleven years old, Serena Kutchinsky's life changed completely. Her father Paul, who owned the high-end jewellery company the House of Kutchinsky, was seized by a wild idea. He wanted to build the world's largest jewelled egg to rival any of Faberge's. The ambition consumed him.

When the Argyle Library Egg was unveiled, it was astonishing: it stood two feet tall, made of solid gold and dripping with pink diamonds. The problem was: nobody would buy it. Just like that, Paul lost everything. The House of Kutchinsky collapsed, his marriage fell apart, and he sank into a spiral of drink and drugs. Within ten years he was dead. As for the egg, it was seized by its creditors and disappeared without trace. For thirty-five years its location has been unknown.

Over time the mystery of the egg began to eat away at Serena. Why did her father risk everything for the pursuit of this outlandish dream? And where in the world was this invaluable object, valued by some modern estimates at GBP100 million? Desperate for answers, she set out to find her father's decadent, ill-fated creation. It is a journey that begins in the slums of London's East End where her great, great grandparents arrived as Jewish immigrants from Russia - and ends in the most unexpected of places.

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.