Two Caravans Marina Lewycka Fig Tree Press, 310pp, £16.99 ISBN 0670916374
Following the success of her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka turns her attention to Ukraine’s “orange revolution” of 2004.
In a strawberry field in Kent, a group of immigrant fruit pickers is housed in two caravans: one for men and the other for women. Among the workers are two Ukrainians: the bourgeois, orange-banner-waving Irina and working-class Andriy, from the Kremlin-facing east.
While their inevitable love story is a typically star-crossed affair, Lewycka presents the two halves of Ukrainian politics brilliantly and without bias. Her characters show us both the futility of civil conflict and the troubles of an ideologically fragmented country.
Lewycka’s real skill, however, is in portraying cultural misinterpretation – not only between countries, but also within them. The immigrants’ idealistic expectations of British society
are hilarious, especially Andriy’s dream of Sheffield as a socialist paradise under its blind leader, David “Vloonki”. The author’s more serious points about immigration are pertinent, but never heavy-handed. No one likes a bargain more than a Ukrainian, and Two Caravans asserts the value of the free things in life, against our materialistic, "mobilfon"-dominated existence.
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