The writer, who was born in a refugee camp in Germany after the war, won the Wodehouse prize for comic writing for her debut A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

The British-Ukrainian novelist Marina Lewycka, best known for her comic debut A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has died aged 79 from a degenerative brain condition, her agent has confirmed.

Lewycka’s fiction often drew on her Ukrainian heritage and her family’s experiences as refugees. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, published in 2005 when she was 58, became an unexpected international bestseller and was translated into 35 languages. It won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing, was longlisted for the Man Booker and shortlisted for the Orange prize for fiction.