Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the Second World War and grew up in England. She now lives in Sheffield with her husband and teaches part-time at Sheffield Hallam University. Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, was published in March 2005, was short-listed for the Orange Prize, long-listed for the Booker prize, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, and the Saga award for wit. To date, it has sold more than one million copies in 29 languages. Her latest novel, Two Caravans, was published in March 2007, and like the Tractors story is a close, humorous and poignant observation of immigrant life in England, in this case focused on a group of Eastern European fruit pickers who live in the countryside in two caravans. Lewycka has also written a number of influential handbooks for Age Concern England