A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian

After two years of widowhood, the heart of Nikolai Mayevski Alexeevich, an octogenarian Ukrainian immigrant living in England, starts beating again like that of a lovesick teenager after Valentina—almost five decades younger, blonde, voluptuous, self-serving, and manipulative—crosses his path. He wants to escape his loneliness; she wants to definitively leave a Ukraine shaken by the recent collapse of communism and, in the process, pull off the famous "jack of all trades." To save their father, sisters Vera and Nadezhda will have to put aside their differences and join forces—which will provide plenty of laughs, but will also bring back memories of Europe's dark recent history. Winner of the Bollinger Everymen and SAGA awards, as well as a finalist for the Orange and Booker Prizes, Marina Lewycka's "A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian" is a tragicomedy that, translated into 27 languages, has stunned readers and critics worldwide. For The Economist, it is "thought-provoking and intensely funny, a comic feast." Raised in England, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, Lewycka has in her blood the ability to combine laughter and pain. "Dark humor is intrinsic to Eastern Europe," says the author. "It's the humor of people accustomed to facing dire circumstances, who escape tragedy by the skin of their teeth, who mock the powerful because there is absolutely nothing else they can do to stop the abuses of power, who laugh because the only alternative to laughter is depression and alcoholism—and there's plenty of that in Ukraine, too." A fluid and entertaining book, but one that, on the other hand, has the rare power to leave a deep mark on the reader.