A novel on tractors in Ukrainian is about anything but

Monument of Independence of Ukraine, sculpted by Anatoly Kushch in Kyiv. Photo by Volodymyr Tokar on Unsplash

Marina Lewycka’s 2005 debut novel, ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’, was generally well-received when it appeared (I remember reading it with considerable pleasure), but panned by the great and the good in Ukraine.

Andrey Kurkov, a prominent Ukrainian writer who’s now being reverently quoted everywhere, reviewed Ms Lewycka’s debut book in The Guardian in withering terms. It’s a quite “banal tale”, he said, “of a Ukrainian woman who enters the UK on a tourist visa and who is prepared to go to any lengths to remain in the country.”

So there we have it.

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian is about anything but. In fact, it is about need, which drives everything really — even war.

Valentina, a buxom young Ukrainian immigrant, needs a British passport, for which she is prepared to marry 84-year-old Nikolai, a Ukrainian immigrant to Britain, whom she cares about not a jot.

…