The Breaking of Eggs
Jim Powell
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 
June 2010 - NZ$34.99 RRP

A panoramic debut about love and loss, people and politics, The Breaking of Eggs announces a major new talent. And what a wonderful cover they gave him. I couldn't resist picking it up the moment I saw it.

This is a novel about Feliks Zhukovski, a Pole in Paris, a hangover from another age - a man who chose politics over people and ideas over love. His life's work is a travel guide to the old Eastern bloc; his personal life a series of failures.

Unfortunately for Feliks, it's 1991. Communism has collapsed, East Germany isn't the economic miracle he wants it to be, and at 61, his travel-writing days are numbered. Feliks makes the shock decision to sell his guide to an American firm, and sets in motion a life-changing chain of events. He will meet a brother he hasn't seen in fifty years, learn the horrifying truth about the mother he thought abandoned him, and get a second chance with a long-lost love. But after fifty years of misunderstandings and delusions, can he start his life afresh?

From the boulevards of Paris to the ghettos of wartime Poland, via Midwest America and the Berlin Wall, The Breaking of Eggs chronicles the extraordinary journey of a lonely man who discovers it needn't have been so. As thought-provoking as it is moving, the novel casts an unflinching gaze on the human cost of a century of wars, in a voice that never loses its humour or uplifting power.

Powell's publishers are keen on this one and I can understand why.Watch out for it, publication June. I hope the author is working on another.

About the author:
Jim Powell spent his early career heading one of London’s largest advertising agencies. He then started a ceramics business producing tableware for The Conran Shop, Heal’s and Bloomingdales. He has always been active in politics, fighting the 1987 General Election in Coventry and acting as a speechwriter to three cabinet ministers. He was also a District Councillor for ten years and deputy leader of Daventry District Council. On a more trivial level, Jim’s first holiday job was working as an office boy for the Beatles; he was one of the first interviewees of Jeremy Paxman (a contemporary of his at Cambridge); he has co-written and appeared in a pilot comedy series for the BBC.