Author | Marina Lewycka |
---|---|
Country | England |
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | Penguin Books (Fig Tree in the UK) |
Publication date | 29 March 2007 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
ISBN | 0-670-91637-4 |
OCLC | 74523455 |
Two Caravans is a novel by Marina Lewycka. It was published by Penguin Books on 29 March 2007 for the United Kingdom market. In the United States and Canada it is published under the title Strawberry Fields. The story focuses on characters who are migrant labourers of various backgrounds working in England's agricultural industry, in particular, portraying Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom. [1] The book follows Lewycka's debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian , and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2008.
A crew of migrant workers from three continents are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future.
The story centres on a group of migrant workers who hail from Eastern Europe, China, Malaysia and Africa and have come to Kent to harvest strawberries for delivery to the supermarkets, and end up living in two small caravans, a men's caravan and a women's caravan. They are all seeking a better life (and in their different ways they are also, of course, looking for love) and they've come to England, some legally, some illegally, to find it.
They are supervised by Farmer Leapish, a red-faced man who treats everyone equally except for the Polish woman named Yola, the boss of the crew, who favours him with her charms in exchange for something a little extra on the side. But the two are discreet, and all is harmonious in this cozy vale – until the evening when Farmer Leapish's wife comes upon him and Yola and in retaliation she runs him down in her red sports car. By the time the police arrive the migrant workers (and a dog called Dog) have piled into one of the trailer homes and quickly leave their arcadia, thus setting off on a journey across the length and breadth of England.
An operatic adaptation of Two Caravans, written by Ace McCarron and composed by Guy Harries, won the Flourish new opera competition in 2012. The adaptation premiered at the King's Head Theatre in 2013. [2]
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, which has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in southern England, around Berkshire, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
Strawberry Fields may refer to:
The Phantom of the Opera is a novel by French author Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serial in Le Gaulois from 23 September 1909 to 8 January 1910, and was released in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte. The novel is partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century, and by an apocryphal tale concerning the use of a former ballet pupil's skeleton in Carl Maria von Weber's 1841 production of Der Freischütz. It has been successfully adapted into various stage and film adaptations, most notable of which are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical.
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, telling a story of "buccaneers and buried gold". It is considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action.
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a physician who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages. He later becomes a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world.
Caravan or caravans may refer to:
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.
Canton is a historic waterfront neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The neighborhood is along Baltimore's outer harbor in the southeastern section of the city, roughly two miles east of Baltimore's downtown district and next to or near the neighborhoods of Patterson Park, Fell's Point, Highlandtown, and Brewers Hill.
Mechanised agriculture is the process of using agricultural machinery to mechanise the work of agriculture, greatly increasing farm worker productivity. In modern times, powered machinery has replaced many farm jobs formerly carried out by manual labour or by working animals such as oxen, horses and mules.
To the Ends of the Earth is the title given to a trilogy of nautical, relational novels—Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989)—by British author William Golding. Set on a former British man-of-war transporting migrants to Australia in the early 19th century, the novels explore themes of class and man's reversion to savagery when isolated, in this case, the closed society of the ship's passengers and crew.
Marina Lewycka is a British novelist of Ukrainian origin.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a humorous novel by Marina Lewycka, first published in 2005 by Viking.
Monkey: Journey to the West is a stage adaptation of the 16th century novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en. It was conceived and created by the Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-Zheng along with British musician Damon Albarn and British artist Jamie Hewlett.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom's first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011.
Marina Alekseyevna Ladynina was a popular Soviet film and theatre actress, best remembered for her leading roles in Tractor Drivers (1939), The Swine Girl and the Shepherd (1941), Six O'Clock after the War is Over (1944), Ballad of Siberia (1947) and Cossacks of the Kuban (1949), all directed by her husband Ivan Pyryev. In 1950 Ladynina was honoured with the People's Artist of the USSR title. She was a five-times Stalin Prize laureate.
Oleksa Nehrebets'kyi is a dubbing director, editor and Ukrainian translator who works mainly with feature films.
Immigrants from Eastern Europe and their descendants have been present in the United Kingdom, in small numbers, for several centuries, with subsequent large migrations in the 21st century. At times, British media also included people with Central European ancestry in this category. This is similar to the definition of Eastern European in the United States, Canada, and Australia: Coming from former Eastern Bloc countries.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was a hit debut for Marina Lewycka, who returns with Two Caravans, about Eastern Europeans in England (Fig Tree, February)