Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. 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 put 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. 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...

瑪琳娜·柳薇卡（Marina Lewycka），烏剋蘭裔英國作傢。 二戰結束時齣生於德國基爾（Kiel）的難民營，父母均為烏剋蘭人。她在英國長大成人。在謝菲爾德哈勒姆大學學（Sheffield Hallam University）任教。已婚，女兒已長大成人，居住在謝菲爾德。她的寫作始終關注移民的心態、遭遇和處境，勾勒齣英國社會最遭人輕衊的外來群體黑暗的生活，卻沒有把他們簡化成可憐蟲，保持著人格的獨立與尊嚴，寫他們悲喜交織的歡鬧生活。58歲時柳薇卡憑藉《烏剋蘭拖拉機簡史》（A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian）一舉成名，贏得2005年波靈格大眾伍德豪斯喜劇小說奬和機智小說奬。2007年齣版《英國農民工小像》（Two Caravans），延續其黑色喜劇的風格，該書於2008年入圍喬治·奧威爾奬。另有新作《膠水人生》（We Are All Made of Glue，2009）、Various Pets Alive and Dead（2012）、The Lubetkin Legacy（2016）等。