Acclaimed British-Ukrainian Novelist Marina Lewycka Passes Away
The literary world is mourning the loss of Marina Lewycka, the celebrated British-Ukrainian author best known for her brilliantly comic debut novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Her agent confirmed she has died at the age of 79 from a degenerative brain condition.
From Refugee Camp to Bestselling Author
Lewycka's own life story was as compelling as her fiction. She was born in 1946 in a British-run refugee camp in Kiel, Germany. Her parents were both Ukrainians who had been taken to Germany as forced labourers by the Nazis during the war. The family later moved to England, where she was raised and educated, eventually building a career as a media studies lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.
It was during her time at the university that she joined a creative writing course, honing the manuscript that would become her legendary first novel. Published in 2005 when she was 58, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian became an unexpected international sensation, translated into 35 languages and captivating readers worldwide.
Award-Winning Comic Genius
The novel's success was meteoric. It won the prestigious Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing, making Lewycka the only woman to receive the award in its first 16 years. The book was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, cementing her status as a unique and powerful voice in contemporary British literature.
Her agent, Bill Hamilton, paid a moving tribute, stating: "Marina burst on the scene with her memorable and bestselling first novel... It introduced her unique comic sensibility, with a strong flavour of farce, matched with a campaigning sense of social justice."
Juliet Annan, her former editor, remembered her as a "true original", adding: "Her crusading fiction will live on as an extraordinarily serious and hilarious record of times and places."
A Prolific Literary Legacy
Lewycka's work was deeply informed by her Ukrainian heritage and her family's experiences as displaced persons. Her debut novel drew closely on her own life, exploring sibling rivalries, the loss of a mother, and an eccentric father's remarriage.
She continued to build on this success with several other acclaimed novels, including:
- Two Caravans (2007) - shortlisted for the Orwell prize for political writing.
- We Are All Made of Glue (2009)
- Various Pets Alive and Dead (2012)
- The Lubetkin Legacy (2016) - shortlisted again for the Wodehouse prize.
- The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid (2020) - her final novel.
Living with Dignity and Humour
In her later years, Lewycca, who lived in Sheffield, battled multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare and progressive neurological disorder. The condition causes the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain and led to dysarthria, which weakened her speech muscles.
Writing in the Guardian in 2020, she reflected on her life with the condition with characteristic grace and wit. "I have come to depend on friends and the kindness of strangers," she wrote. "One of the few advantages of this condition is that I get to see human beings at their best."
Despite the challenges, she continued to write, noting that "sometimes the mistakes can open up new avenues of creative thought... It keeps me smiling when there's not much else to smile about."
Marina Lewycka is survived by her partner, Donald Sassoon, and her daughter, Sonia. Her unique voice, which so masterfully blended humour with a powerful sense of social justice, leaves an indelible mark on the world of literature.
