Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #864 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
A field of strawberries in Kent ... And sitting in it two caravans - one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over: miner's son Andriy is from the old Ukraine, while sexy young Irina is from the new: they eye each other warily. There are the Poles Tomasz and Yola, two Chinese girls and Emanuel from Malawi. They're all here to pick strawberries in England's green and pleasant land. But these days England's not so pleasant for immigrants. Not with Russian gangster-wannabes like Vulk, who's taken a shine to Irina and thinks kidnapping is a wooing strategy. And so Andriy - who really doesn't fancy Irina, honest - must set off in search of that girl he's not in love with.

From the Back Cover
`Her last book was entertaining, but this one is better...Very buoyant, witty and informative' The Sunday Times

`A great romp...with considerable heart and winsomeness' Literary Review

`Another black comedy masterpiece...an extraordinary, surprisingly funny tale' Easy Living

'Lewycka's heartfelt and funny novel packs as big a punch as any hard-hitting political polemic' Daily Mail

`Another winner from the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' Woman and Home

`Marina Lewycka has pulled off another story with a big heart' Daily Express

`Lewycka's heartfelt and funny novel packs as big a punch as any hard-hitting political polemic' Daily Mail

`An extremely funny book' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She is married, with a grown-up daughter, and lives in Sheffield.

Customer Reviews

One of the best books I've read this year
I enjoyed 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian', but this was way better. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, and others had me on the verge of tears. To achieve that and to contain enough truths [some of them very uncomfortable] to make the reader think as well takes a very talented writer.

Andriy's attempt to track down 'Vagvaga Riskegipd' was a stroke of pure genius. Despite being a Russian-speaker, I was halfway through the book before it dawned on me why an English girl would have such a daft name!

Absolutely brilliant, and I recommend it without reservation.

Funny,dark, but very good....ENJOY!
If this is modern England told through the eyes of an Eastern european immigrant, we are in far more trouble than we realise. In fact I think this story is far closer to reality than many of us leading comfortable English lives would ever like to imagine. Yet for all those dark thoughts, this book is funny, well told, beautifully characterised, superbly observed, and truly a lovely story. Her first book "tractors" was a wonderful story, "caravans" is every bit as good, if not better. Enjoy! I did!

stay off the strawberries in future
Two Caravans is the tricky follow-up title to a first hit - how did she get on?

Well it's a fairly hair-raising read, I think. It's about a group of foreign strawberry pickers who've been trafficked to a really disgusting farm somewhere in Kent where they are being completely exploited by being charged loads for the rental of the two caravans where they live and for the lousy food the farmer supplies.

Things get even worse when the horrible lechy head trafficker decides he fancies Irina, the prettiest young Ukrainian. She flees him and his gun in the night, getting lost somewhere in the middle of huge fields in a genuinely tense passage.

But it's also got a kind of comic road trip theme, as the other pickers set off in the caravan to try to change their destiny in the UK back to what they'd hoped it might be before arriving. This sometimes turns out badly - they get fleeced at more than one point - and sometimes pretty well.

There are many things I could say about this book, but here's just two: 1) I've never read a book about the lives of people working such low-wage jobs before (maybe just articles in the Guardian) and it was eye-opening and good. 2) I'm never eating an English supermarket strawberry again.