MARINA LEWYCKA

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.

Georgie Sinclair''s life is coming unstuck. Her husband''s left her. Her son''s obsessed with the End of the World. And now her eldely neighbour Mrs Shapiro has decided they are related.Or so the hospital informs her when Mrs Shapiro has an accident and names Georgie next of kin. This, however, is not a case of a quick ward visit: Mrs Shapiro has a large rickety house full of stinky cats that needs looking after that a pair of estate agents seem intent on swindling from her. Plus there are the ''Uselesses'' trying to repair it (uselessly). Then there''s the social worker who wants to put her in a nursing home. Not to mention some letters that point to a mysterious, painful past.As Georgie tries her best to put Mrs Shapiro''s life back together somehow she must stop her own from falling apart...

From bonding to bondage, from B&Q to Belarus, along with seven smelly cats, three useless handymen, two slimy estate agents, social workers, a bonker lady. The story of a very unlikely friendship. Georgie Sinclair''s husband has walked out; her sixteen-year-old son is busy surfing born-again websites; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World are getting her down. So when Georgie spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish emigre neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it''s just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first - Georgie doesn''t like the look of that past-its-sell-by-date fish, while Mrs Shapiro thinks Georgie needs to smarten herself up and grab a new husband - a firm friendship is formed over the reduced-price shelf at the supermarket. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and to Georgie''s surprise, she is named as her next of kin. But sorting out Mrs Shapiro''s semi-derelict mansion in Highbury, home to seven stinky cats with agendas of their own, is no easy job when the handyman called in to change the locks turns out to be not what he seems and his two assistants, ''the Uselesses'', are doing more breaking than fixing. And what about the two slimy estate agents (one with a charming taste for bondage) who start competing to trick Mrs Shapiro into selling her rickety old house, or the social worker determined to commit her to a nursing home? As Geogie steps in to help her new friend, she finds herself unravelling a mystery which takes her from Highbury to wartime Europe to the Middle East, and learning a bit about DIY along the way.

For twenty years Doro and Marcus lived in a commune, convinced lentils and free love would change the world. They didnt. What they did do was give their children a terror of radicalism, dirt, cooking rotas and poverty. So when Doro and Marcus spring a surprise on their kids the family is forced to confront some thorny truths about themselves...

RESUMEN

Georgie Sinclairs life is coming unstuck. Her husbands left her. Her sons obsessed with the End of the World. And now her elderly neighbour Mrs Shapiro has decided they are related. Or so the hospital informs her when Mrs Shapiro has an accident and names Georgie next of kin.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewyckas hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorce. 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 migr 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 Europes darkest history and sends them back to roots theyd much rather forget . . .Its rare to find a first novel that gets so much right . . . Lewycka is a seriously talented comic writer Time OutHugely enjoyable . . . yields a golden harvest of family truths Daily TelegraphDelightful, funny, touching Spe

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre 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.

The new novel from the author of "A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian" and "Two Caravans". It is the story of a very unlikely friendship: Georgie Sinclair's husband has walked out, her teenage son is busy surfing born-again websites and she hates her job. One night she spots her eccentric old Jewish émigré neighbour, Mrs Shapiro, rummaging through her skip, and through initial mistrust they become close. So much so, that Mrs Shapiro names her as next of kin when she is taken to hospital and Georgie finds herself dealing with 7 smelly cats, 2 slimy estate agents and a social worker determined to put Mrs Shapiro in a home.

El profesor Abel Cornelius -alter ego de Thomas Mann- observa el transcurso de una jornada familiar, con la incipiente celebración de una fiesta organizada por sus hijos mayores, la encantadora Ingrid y el carente de talento Bert. Por su mirada se pasean tambien los hijos pequeños: Lorchen, la hijita predilecta que le tiene robado el corazon, y el discolo y feo Beisser. Todo ello en el marco de una Alemania sumida en una posguerra triste, pobre y con nuevos valores.

Tractors was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction and the Waverton Good Read Award. Two Caravans was shortlisted for

Serge und Clara haben kaum Gemeinsamkeiten. Doch die zusammen durchlittene Kindheit in einer Hippiekommune hat sie fur immer zusammengeschweit. Die Nachricht ihrer Eltern, nach 35 Jahren wilder Ehe doch noch heiraten zu wollen, ist eine echte Uberraschung. Doch es gibt Schlimmeres. Vor allem Serge steckt in der Klemme: Statt zu promovieren, dient er als Investmentbanker schon langst dem elterlichen Feindbild schlechthin: dem Kapitalismus. Er will das ganz groe Geld machen, im Zweifelsfall mit illegaler Zockerei. Dumm nur, dass 2008 die Finanzwelt in ihre grote Krise sturzt und mit ihr Serge

'Lively ...a joy to read' - The Times 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.

Marcus et Doro, deux hippies vieillissants, décident de se marier et de réunir la communauté dans laquelle ils ont vécu pendant vingt ans. Cette réunion amène leurs enfants, Oolie-Anna, Clara et Serg

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In the idyll of the English countryside, on a beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field, and around their two caravans, a little group of strawberry pickers is getting ready to celebrate a birthday. But who picks our strawberries these days? The Ukrainians: Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, and eager to improve her excellent English and find true love with a romantic Englishman; Andriy, the miner's son from the other Ukraine; the Poles: Bob Dylan fan, Tomasz, (whose smelly trainers will soon punish those in the men's caravan), Yola, the petite, voluptuous gangmistress and her religious niece Marta, who finds the wild mushrooms to cook with the sliced loaf; then there is Vitaly, king of the new mobilfon world of the shiny new Eastern Europe; two Chinese girls; Emanuel, the round eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi, come to England to look for his sister. And although he can't exactly help pick strawberries, there's also the Dog...But these are a group leading dangerous lives - exploitative employers, British regulations and gang masters with guns will all threaten their existence as they take to the caravan road until each of them peels off to find their destiny. Hilarious, gritty, moving, and slapstick by turns, "Two Caravans" has every bit of the extraordinary distinctiveness and wit and heart that made "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" so successful.

For years, Nadezhda and Vera, two Ukrainian sisters, raised in England by their refugee parents, have had as little as possible to do with each other - and they have their reasons. But now, they find they'd better learn how to get along, because since their mother's death their aging father has been sliding into his second childhood, and an alarming new woman has just entered his life. Valentina, a bosomy young synthetic blonde from the Ukraine, seems to think their father is much richer than he is, and she is keen that he leave this world with as little money to his name as possible. If Nadazhda and Vera don't stop her, no one will. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat - Valentina is a ruthless pro and the two sisters swiftly realize that they are mere amateurs when it comes to ruthlessness.As Hurricane Valentina turns the family house upside down, old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the War, the one that explains much about why Nadazhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage, a grand history of the tractor.