A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

I rarely read fiction. Well, Philip K. Dick is an exception, but I guess all rules need several exceptions to become proper rules, don't they? So it's not a wonder that a book I was given as a present remained on my shelf for a full year before I opened it. But when I did open it I literally fell into it. And in love with it. It looks like there ARE good writers in contemporary Europe, after all.

The book has a weird title (and an even weirder cover). It's called A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian the author is Marina Lewicka (yes the book is written in English, in case the title and the surname managed to puzzle you). One year ago one of the best guys I know, my good friend Dick Monk, came to visit us from England, and he was reading the book as he came, in a sort of preparatory course for what he was about to see. When he left he gave the book as a present, telling me I should really take the time to read it.

Well... add my little love for fiction to the fact that almost all of us buy lots of paper we don't really like and eventually abandon somewhere... and you will know why it was left on my shelf for twelve months or so. Yet, when I opened the first page it took me just to days to read it through. And it managed to drive me in tears, at some point (which is really a rare event for books, usually music can easily do that, but books... oh no). I won't spend much time in talking about the plot. There is no way I can write that plot better than it's written, so if you are curious just buy yourself the book and read it.

The book is about the billions of personal realities that get intertwined into one, into the world we live in. It's about how different we all are, and how in the end one really has to face this before he can manage to bridge these differences. It's an incredible portrait of the planet as it can be seen by a person who does not belong into a given place, but is rather the end product of a cultural puzzle herself. So in some way it's about languages, too.

Marina Lewicka has also published a short emotional report of her 2005 trip to the Ukraine. I'm not sure it makes much sense for just any reader. It sure makes sense when read by me, who have been living as a stranger in Kiev for the last seven years. Probably it can make a lot of sense for those who are migrants and gypsies, those who have a faraway land they can consider as theirs, while actually knowing that time has left them with little to share with it.

I'm a bit puzzled by the recension quoted on the book's cover, though. Mind you, what exactly is hilarious or funny in this book? But since the last word is always the winner, I'm happy to see that the collection of quotes ends with the adjective touching, which certainly hits the mark. I rarely quote people's opinions in detail but as one reader has it on Amazon: I'm not sure why people label this book a "comedy." It most certainly is not. The elements of humor help the reader absorb the enormous amount of pain contained within. I suppose it is possible to skim the surface and laugh at the dark humor, but the book is much deeper than that. My thoughts, exactly. I have travelled myself on the small vans that deliver all the Valentinas of the world to their unreal dreams of glory and very real hardships. Pain is the right word, both for the western and eastern characters of the plot.

Was the book translated into Ukrainian? LOLOLOL obviously not, at least I never saw it. Some explanations of the fact may be here, and sadly they tend to make sense. If there is something this country is badly missing, it's some sense of humour, although lately we are beginning to see some first signs of it. My hopes are mostly based on the success enjoyed by a young television team called 95 kvartal, probably the highest intellectual achievement of this country since independence. TV is not literature, sure, yet I believe that small steps can make a really long path, so let's praise TV when it deserves it.

Hopefully I will live to see the day in which books like A short history... will be written, published and widely read not only in emigration, but also here. That day will mark the real irrevocable entrance of the Ukraine in Europe. The day in which a European intelligentsia will fill Kiev's contemporary intellectual desert. In the meantime... thanks a LOT to Marina Lewicka for reminding the planet that not all Ukrainians live to manically collect status symbols. I'm not Ukrainian myself, but after seven years here I feel Ukrainian enough to be proud of whatever good is done by an Ukrainian.