Product Description
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Author: Marina Lewycka
Format: Paperback
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2026
The British Book Award 2026
The Award-Winning, Million-Copy Bestseller
A hilarious, lively, moving and compassionate debut about one Ukrainian-British family's tumultuous relationship and the history they never knew.
'Delightful, funny, touching' — Spectator
"As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families."
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their widowed, tractor-obsessed Ukrainian father from the voluptuous, wealth-obsessed Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she outmanoeuvres the sisters at every turn.
But their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of European and Ukrainian history, and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget . . .
'Hugely enjoyable . . . yields a golden harvest of family truths' — Daily Telegraph
'Captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life . . . a very rich mixture indeed' — Daily Express
'It's rare to find a first novel that gets so much right . . . Lewycka is a seriously talented comic writer' — Time Out
About the Author
Marina Lewycka was born in Kiel, Germany, after the Second World War, and moved to England with her family when she was about a year old. Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction and the Waverton Good Read Award. Her second novel, Two Caravans, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Two Caravans and Marina's third and fourth novels, We Are All Made of Glue, Various Pets Alive and Dead and The Lubetkin Legacy are all available in Penguin.
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