A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian [Paperback]

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 Ukrainiancombines sex, bitchiness, wit, and genuine warmth in its celebration of the pleasure of growing old disgracefully. A charming comedy of eros... A ride that, despite the bumps and curves in the road, never feels anything less than jaunty. —Los Angeles Times

Lewycka is a writer with a fundamentally optimistic vision of the future and a healthy curiosity about the past. —Chicago Tribune

Charming, poignantly funny. —The Washington Post Book World

INTRODUCTION

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Marriage,” writes Marina Lewycka, “is never just about people falling in love, it is about families.” Lewycka’s debut novel,A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, begins as narrator Nadia’s widowed father Nikolai announces his intention to marry a glamorous divorcee fifty years younger than he. His two feuding daughters realize they must unite to free their father from the clutches of Valentina, a Ukrainian bombshell and “boil-in-the-bag cook” with “superior” breasts and a “genius” son, whose demands læ