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Book Summary and Reviews of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

by Marina Lewycka

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  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2005, 294 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

With this wise, tender, and deeply funny novel, Marina Lewycka takes her place alongside Zadie Smith and Monica Ali as a writer who can capture the unchanging verities of family. When an elderly and newly widowed Ukrainian immigrant announces his intention to remarry, his daughters must set aside their longtime feud to thwart him. For their father's intended is a voluptuous old-country gold digger with a proclivity for green satin underwear and an appetite for the good life of the West. As the hostilities mount and family secrets spill out, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian combines sex, bitchiness, wit, and genuine warmth in its celebration of the pleasure of growing old disgracefully.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"'I had thought this story was going to be a knockabout farce, but now I see it is developing into a knockabout tragedy,' Nadezhda says at one point, and though she is referring to Valentina, she might also be describing this unusual and poignant novel." - Publishers Weekly.

"Drawing on her own family, Lewycka has created a funny, tender, and intelligent novel that is as much social history as family saga. It is a delight." - Booklist.

"Not enough here to reinvigorate an old, old story." - Kirkus Reviews.

"[T]he charming, poignantly funny first novel by Marina Lewycka, a daughter of Ukrainian immigrants." - The Washington Post.

"This novel of ruts and progress, ease and horror, assumption and suspicion, yields a golden harvest of family truths." - The Daily Telegraph.

"Lewycka is a natural writer, a humorist with a light touch who draws the reader in to a family feud that is utterly funny but also stricken with plaintive sadness over the effects of war and inequity on human relationships. Nothing preachy here, just a boisterous meditation on the need to reconcile old and new Ukraine." - The San Francisco Chronicle.

This information about A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

A fun read with a happy ending
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is the first novel by British/Ukrainian author, Marina Lewycka. Two years after the death of his wife, Ludmilla, eighty-four year old Nikolai Mayevskyj announces to his youngest daughter, Nadezhda (Nadia) that he is going to marry Valentina, a thirty-six year old Ukrainian divorcee with a teenaged son. As Nadia tries to reason with her determined father, she realises that if she is to prevent him being fleeced by this unscrupulous (bottle-)blonde bombshell, she will need to join forces with Vera, the older sister from whom she has been estranged since they disagreed over their mother’s will. In the process of trying to oust Valentina from their lives and have her deported, much of the family’s history is dredged up and Nadia discovers that what she has been told as a child was not necessarily accurate. This is a rollicking ride that encompasses boil-in-the-bag suppers, an undriveable Rolls Royce, a tomcat named Lady Di, a portable photocopier, a baby of unknown paternity, yoga, sheltered housing and some green satin underwear. Nikolai’s theory on the integral role of tractors in the development of Great Depression, Fascism in Germany and Communism in Russia will provide food for thought. The extracts from the book he is writing, the eponymous “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” are delightful. This book was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005. A fun read with a happy ending.

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Author Information

Marina Lewycka Author Biography

Marina Lewycka, the daughter of two Ukrainians who were taken to Germany as forced laborers by the Nazis, was born in a British-run refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, in 1946. Her family settled in the UK shortly after. She studied at Keele University in Staffordshire, and has written a number of books of practical advice for carers of the elderly, published by Age Concern. Described as funny, open and energized, she is a longtime resident of Sheffield, England where she used to lecture in media studies at Sheffield Hallam University.  She is still attached to the University, but on a part-time basis.

Her first novel, The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005) was published when she was 58.  It tells of the exploits of two feuding sisters trying to save their elderly ...

... Full Biography
Link to Marina Lewycka's Website

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