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.

Marina Lewycka was born in Kiel, Germany at the end of the war and grew up in England. Her novels Two Caravans and We Are All Made of Glue are available in Penguin now.