A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka`s hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

`Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.`

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.

But the sisters` campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe`s darkest history and sends them back to roots they`d much rather forget . . .