A Needle In A Haystack (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian)

Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian couldn't have been published at a better time. The announcement that Romania and Bulgaria are set to join the EU as early as next year has brought about a deluge of articles damning Easten European immigrants. Nonetheless, this amazing novel has been on the Guardian Books Bestseller List for weeks and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize at the 2005 Hay literary festival. Obviously the tabloid scaremongering isn't working as well as they'd hoped.

Narrated by Nadezhda, a university sociology lecturer and the daughter of Ukrainian émigré Nikolai, ASHOTIU explores the Mayevska family's struggle after 84-year old Nikolai decides to marry a 36-year old gold-digging Ukrainian divorcee. In particular, it delves into the tumultuous relationship between Nadezhda and her sister Vera, who are thrown together in the common pursuit of saving their father from his new wife's unsavoury clutches.

The plot is so madly entertaining that the reader often forgets the darker undertones that the novel presents: the tragic history of the Ukraine, the plight of immigrants both past and present and the exploitation of the vulnerable. All of these issues were things that I thought about after I’d finished the book, especially in relation to the recent media coverage on immigration from this part of the world.

Often hilarious, sometimes hideously tragic, Marina Lewycka’s characterisation and detail takes the reader through every possible emotion. I would go as far as to say that the fictionalisation and execution of many of her arguments on immigration could be enough to change a lot of people’s mind on the topic. But then the type of person who reads this book is probably quite liberal already, so it is a case of preaching to the converted.

This book is a modern diamond in the rough—a novel that all of us should read in order to build understanding of cultures and the world that we live in. But aside from that, it’s a comedic, addictive story of love, loss and learning.