A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka (Penguin Essentials, 71)

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rationally. What does this suggest about the benefits and limitations of our attempts at logical explanation, particularly as regards our families? really enjoyed about writing this book is being able to put all those unacceptable thoughts into words: the rows and arguments, the uninhibited like the last. My parents hadn't talked to me about the hardships they had lived through. But a couple of years before my mother died, I did talk I certainly didn't set out to write a comic book. I had thought I would write something profound and sad about the 'human condition', and I

I had grown up in England thinking of myself as essentially English, though with a name that most people couldn't pronounce, and a few family eccentricities - home and garden, Along the way the two sisters confront differences that shadowed them have throughout their childhoods and Nadia learns for A wise, tender and deeply funny novel about families, the belated healing of old wounds,the trials and consolations of old age and - really - about Bestselling author Marina Lewkyca has received great critical acclaim since the publication of her hilarious first novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainianin 2005, which was the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005, winner of the Saga Award for Wit 2005, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2005 and longlisted for the Booker prize 2005. Her other humorous novels Two Caravans(published as Strawberry Fieldsin the USA and Canada), We Are All Made of Glueand Various Pets Alive and Deadare also available from Penguin. Valentina non è esattamente il massimo dell’accortezza, si muove come un caterpillar, come un trattore (ma non è certo peggio delle due legittime eredi, Vera e Nadia): ripulisce il conto in banca di Nikolaj, divorzia, e lo ricopre di buffi epiteti e ingiurie in un buffo mix delle due lingue, la sua d’origine e quella che sta cercando d’acquisire (con incerto risultato): “moscio floscio” e avanti di questo passo.

by trying not to judge, and instead diplomatically asks questions about both parties' motivations. What would you do if you had a parent or family The sisters are horrified. It seems completely clear to them that Valentina is just using their father to stay in the UK, and they are scandalized that all it took to bamboozle their supposedly brilliant father are some satin green underwear and a pretended knowledge of Nietzsche. However, we soon learn that while Valentina is indeed an opportunist, everything she does is for her son Stanislav, whose high IQ wasn’t well served in Ukrainian schools. Every language has its figures of speech and imagery which we take so much for granted that we hardly notice, but translated into a foreign language they

Nadia is a sociologist, while her sister Vera is more of a socialite, and they haven't spoken to each other since their mother died. Now, Oh really? How do you know this, Nadezhda? My writer's group would have taken me to task if I had presented them with this. There is a wonderful use of hybrid language in the book, dialogue that is a combination of Ukrainian and English. Did you spend some time Were your parents, like Nadia's, reluctant to discuss their past, particularly wartime events? How well informed were you about life in Vera and Nadia decide to let go of, and which begin to seem less important? Have you ever had a conflict with a family member that you couldsister, now in her sixties and living in Moscow with her daughter and grandchildren. And my cousin Yuriy with his mother Oksana, who is aged 86