After walking out on his wife to shack up with ‘Brexit Brenda’ next door, George Pantis thinks he’s got it made – especially when he wins millions on a Kosovan lottery he barely remembers entering.

Unfortunately, he can’t access the money because he’s forgotten his password. What is he meant to tell all the forceful people who keep appearing at his doorstep desperate to know his mother’s maiden name?

The situation is shadier than he thinks, and George is need of rescue. But will his dysfunctional family be able to save him, and in the process, can they save each other?
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‘Lewycka has carved out a reputation for tackling Big Topics with wit and humour’ Radio Times

‘Warmly funny’ Daily Mail

‘Her state-of-the-nation novel crackles with zingy one-liners and shrewd humour’ Mail on Sunday

‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.

But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget . . .

‘It’s rare to find a first novel that gets so much right . . . Lewycka is a seriously talented comic writer’ Time Out

‘Hugely enjoyable . . . yields a golden harvest of family truths’ Daily Telegraph

‘Delightful, funny, touching’ Spectator

Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize

From the bestselling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

North London in the twenty-first century: a place where a son will swiftly adopt an old lady and take her home from hospital to impersonate his dear departed mother, rather than lose the council flat.

A time of golden job opportunities, though you might have to dress up as a coffee bean or work as an intern at an undertaker or put up with champagne and posh French dinners while your boss hits on you.

A place rich in language – whether it’s Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Swahili or buxom housing officers talking managementese.

A place where husbands go absent without leave and councillors sacrifice cherry orchards at the altar of new builds.

Marina Lewycka is back in this hilarious, farcical, tender novel of modern issues and manners.

A field of strawberries in Kent…

And sitting in it are 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 each other warily. There are the Poles, Tomasz and Yola; two Chinese girls; and Emauel 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.

‘Immensely appealing. All but sings with zest for life…could hardly be more engaging, shrewd and winningly perceptive’ Sunday Times

‘Extremely funny, closely observed insights, scenes of farce, tragedy and horror’ The Times Literary Supplement

‘Hilarious and horrifying, Two Caravans is funny, clever and well observed’ Guardian

Bestselling author Marina Lewkyca has received great critical acclaim since the publication of her hilarious first novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian in 2005, which was the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005, winner of the Saga Award for Wit 2005, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2005 and longlisted for the Booker prize 2005. Her other humorous novels We Are All Made of Glue and Various Pets Alive and Dead are also available from Penguin. Two Caravans is published as Strawberry Fields in the USA and Canada.

A hilarious, lively, moving and compassionate debut about one Ukrainian-British family‘s tumultuous relationship and the history they never knew.

‘Delightful, funny, touching’ Spectator

*****

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their widowed, tractor-obsessed Ukrainian father from the voluptuous, wealth-obsessed Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she outmanoeuvres the sisters at every turn.

But their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of European and Ukrainian history, and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget . . .

*****

‘Hugely enjoyable . . . yields a golden harvest of family truths’ Daily Telegraph

‘Captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life . . . a very rich mixture indeed’ Daily Express

‘It’s rare to find a first novel that gets so much right . . . Lewycka is a seriously talented comic writer’ Time Out