BOOK REVIEW

Marina Lewycka was born in a refugee camp in 1946 in Kiel, Germany. Her family was able to migrate to England. She studied at Keele University, She currently teaches media studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Between 1993 and 2002, Lewycka wrote seven books to assist caregivers, particularly those working with the aged. Then with a failed novel on hand, and following a course in creative writing at her university, she turned to her roots and wrote a comic novel, "The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" (2005), about sibling rivalry and two sisters trying to manipulate their father's affair at 84 with a dashing woman of 36. It won the comic fiction prize at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival, making her the first female winner.

It also won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction and made the Man Booker Prize long list. Her novel was no longer shelved under "Agriculture". It is soon to be made into a movie.