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Led by James Naughtie, readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

Led by James Naughtie, a group of readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

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Bookclub: Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

04/01/2015

BBC Radio 4 - Bookclub, Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Marina Lewycka discusses her comic novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

Marina Lewycka discusses A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian with James Naughtie and a group of readers. The novel won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005.

James Naughtie's first guest on Bookclub for 2015 is Marina Lewycka.

Marina was born in Kiel, Germany, after the war, and moved to England with her family when she was about a year old.

Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005.

Nadezhda and her sister Vera are dismayed when their eighty-four year old father falls in love with a thirty-six year old Ukrainian divorcee. Their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets going back fifty years into some of Europe's darkest history, and the two sisters must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their father.

James Naughtie presents and a group of readers - including some from the Ukrainian community in London - join in the discussion.

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Marina Lewycka
Producer: Dymphna Flynn
February's Bookclub choice : When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.

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