Marina Lewycka

1946–2025

British novelist born in 1946 to Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, who moved to England with her family as a baby. She studied at Keele University and the University of York and later lectured in media studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Her debut, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, published when she was 58, sold more than a million copies in Britain and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Later novels include Two Caravans and The Lubetkin Legacy. She died in November 2025. The book was longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize.

Timeline of Marina Lewycka’s life

Works

• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005)

Prizes

• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian — The Booker Prize 2005: Longlist