The characters are wonderfully portrayed and the twists and turns of the plot border on the outrageous.Īnd yes, there are tractors, but only in a good way! What follows is a witty and at times downright hilarious romp as the sisters come together to try to prevent the marriage. That is until the day their 84 year-old father announces he is to marry a 34 year-old Ukrainian divorcee. There is no real love between the surviving members, particularly the sisters who fight continually about everything. We very quickly learn that this is no ordinary family and he is no ordinary father.

It is two years since the death of their mother, and for sisters Vera and Nedezhda, the only thing they have left in common is their father. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Two Caravans, We Are All Made of Glue and Marina's fourth novel, Various Pets Alive and Dead, are all available in Penguin.ĭespite the title, tractors are not the central theme of this book, although they do play a part. Her second novel, Two Caravans, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction and the Waverton Good Read Award.

Marina Lewycka was born in Kiel, Germany, after the war, grew up in England and lives in Sheffield. She devoured everything from Proust to Harry Potter, from James Joyce to EL James, she adored detective stories, but maybe her favourite author was Marina Lewycka, whose A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian had strangely echoed a case she had once worked on.' Books were both her escape and her guilty pleasure, which eased her through the boring days and enlivened the nights when her husband was too tired for love. 'Ever since she'd first read Sherlock Holmes, Laura Carter had dreamed of being a detective. Marina Lewycka returns to the characters from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, with a hilarious erotic twist, in this laugh-out-loud short story, A Shorter History of Tractors in Ukrainian with Handcuffs.

A short history of tractors