Overview
- Her agent, Bill Hamilton, confirmed her death, which was reported by outlets on November 13–14.
- She had been living with multiple system atrophy, a rare degenerative neurological disorder.
- Her 2005 debut, published at age 58, became a global bestseller translated into 35 languages and won the Wodehouse prize.
- She was born in 1946 in a British-run refugee camp in Kiel to Ukrainian parents who had been forced into wartime labor, later growing up in England.
- Before turning to fiction she lectured at Sheffield Hallam University; her subsequent novels included Two Caravans, We Are All Made of Glue, Various Pets Alive and Dead, The Lubetkin Legacy, and a final novel in 2020, and she is survived by partner Donald Sassoon and daughter Sonia.