Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

The Booker longlisted first book from Britain’s funniest bestselling novelist, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time

‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.

But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget…

About the Author: Marina Lewycka was born in Kiel, Germany at the end of the war and grew up in England. Her novels Two Caravans and We Are All Made of Glue are available in Penguin now.

01 Jun 2017
 

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka ISBN 9780241981443