Strawberry Fields
By Marina Lewycka
Another book by the same author as the previous book.
This book follows the adventures and misadventures of a group of immigrant labourers, originally hired to pick strawberries in the U.K.
Written as a comic adventure, the humour is dark, as the novel is about legal and mostly illegal immigrant labourers who risk everything to come to work in the U.K. Everything from farm labour to working on chicken factory farms, to restaurant workers and women who end up in the sex trade. Unscrupulous agents find desperate people at ferries and train stations, or they have made arrangements with innocent people leaving their home countries, and they profit from treating people as virtual slaves, paying them virtually nothing.
Many people come from Eastern European countries, and once again this novel features many Ukrainians, though many others from other Eastern European countries, as well as Africa and China.
A funny and tragic adventure, through various jobs, the labour underworld, and along the way the two main characters face death, and eventually find love.
Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: An interesting read, on many levels.
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