Lev is a legal East European immigrant into the United Kingdom. In The Road Home we travel with him on the coach that brings him from his home village, his elderly mother, beloved small daughter and his friend Rudi. Lydia is on the seat next to him and stays connected with him throughout the novel.

In London we share Lev’s struggle to survive and rise through the working ranks. London offers him work, friendship, sex and money and also some hostility and misery. This novel is an unusual glimpse into the difficult lives of migrant workers.

Back at home, Rudi’s struggles with his American Chevrolet add hilarity to the novel and there is grief when the native village is going to be submerged under a new reservoir. With great charm and sensitivity, Rose Tremain brings the story to a successful conclusion.

The Road Home won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2008 and it is easy to see why. it is a novel of great humanity.

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