Fiction

Poles Apart – Oscar Fovarge’s state of the nation satire set in the fictional locality of the Malvoir Valley in the County of Ware and Tare.

In a little-known corner of England, an elderly woman wills her landed estate to her middle-aged niece and her rich, Californian husband, instead of passing it to her grandson. In need of even more cash to fund their lifestyles, the new landowners team up with the leader of the local Council to develop part of their extensive landholdings. The move sparks upheaval in the local community, bringing into sharp focus the accumulated discontent over the power of vested interests.

Into this turbulence step the Zielinskys, a large, extended family of entrepreneurial Polish workers. They are given free lodging in a dilapidated barn owned by Hugh, the dispossessed heir to his grandmother’s estate. At first, few realise what their arrival could mean for Hugh and rest of the Malvoir Valley.

Residents in a village likely to be worst affected by the development begin their campaign of opposition. Recruiting the impoverished Hugh and his Polish allies to the cause, they make up the core of a hundred or so inexperienced, political ‘virgins’ whose only real hope is to go down fighting.

In a light-hearted satire, set one year before the 2016 referendum on EU membership, Oscar Fovarge presents a microcosm of the nation as a heavily outgunned community rises up to resist complacency, groupthink and venality.

Paperback: ISBN 978-1-9160843-7-7 Available
E-Book: ISBN 978-1-9160843-9-1 Available