Excerpt from Strawberry Fields (Two Caravans) by Marina Lewycka, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But the worst thing is that because of the slope, and the way their trailer is positioned, you can only get a view of the women’s trailer from the window above Tomasz’s bed. Should he ask Tomasz to move over so he can take a look and see whether that girl is still around? No. They’d only make stupid remarks.

In the women’s trailer they have been up since dawn. Yola has learned from experience that it is better to rise early if they don’t want the Dumpling knocking on the door and inviting himself in while they are getting dressed, hanging around watching them with those hungry-dog eyes - doesn’t he have anything better to do?

Irina and the Chinese girls have to get up first and fold away the double bed before there is room for anyone to move. They cannot use the lavatory and washroom until the Dumpling arrives with the key to the prefab - what does he think they’re going to do? Unroll the toilet paper at night? - but there is a handy gap in the hedge only a few meters away, though Yola cannot for the life of her understand why there always seem to be faces grinning at the window of the other trailer whenever any of the women slips behind the hedge. Don’t they have anything better to do down there?

There is a cold-water tap and washing bowl at the side of the women’s trailer, and even a shower made from a bucket with holes in the bottom, fed from a black- painted oil drum stuck up in a tree. In the evening, after it has been in the sun all day, the water is pleasantly warm. That nice-looking boy Andriy, who is quite a gallant despite being Ukrainian, has erected a screen of birch poles and plastic sacks around it, disregarding the protests of Vitaly and Tomasz, who complained that he spoiled their innocent entertainment - really those two are worse than the children at nursery school, what they need is a good smacking - and now they can no longer see the shower, they spend all their time making comments about the items on the women’s wash line. Recently a pair of her panties has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Yola cannot for the life of her understand how grown men can be such fools. Well, in fact, she can.

It was Tomasz who stole the panties, in a moment of drunken frivolity one night last week. They are made of white cotton, generously cut, with a pretty mauve ribbon in the front. He has been looking out ever since for the right moment to return them discreetly without being caught - he wouldn’t want anyone to think he is the sort of man who steals women’s underwear from wash lines and keeps them under his bed.

"I see Yola has washed her undies again today," he says morosely in Polish, peering through Vitaly’s binoculars from the window above his bed. "I wonder what is the meaning of this."

The white panties dangle in the air like a provocation. When Yola recruited him to her strawberry-picking team, there had been a twinkle about her that had seemed to suggest she was inviting him to . . . well, more than just pick strawberries.

"What do you mean, what is the meaning?" asks Vitaly in Russian, mimicking Tomasz’s Polish accent. "Most of what women do is completely meaningless."

Vitaly is vague about his origins and Tomasz has never pressed him, assuming he is some kind of illegal or Gypsy. Despite himself, he is impressed by the way Vitaly can slip easily between Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. Even his English is quite good. But what use are all those languages if you have no poetry in your soul?

"In the poetry of women’s undergarments, there is always meaning. Like the blossoms that fall from a tree as the heat of summer approaches. . . . Like clouds that melt away . . ."

He can feel a song coming on.

"Enough," says Vitaly. "The Angliskis would call you a soiled old man."

Excerpted from Strawberry Fields by Marina Lewycka Copyright © 2007 by Marina Lewycka. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Group USA, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.