MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

Bestselling author Marina Lewycka

Born in 1946 in a refugee camp in Germany, Marina Lewycka came to england aged one. Her first novel, A Short History of tractors In ukrainian, was rejected 36 times before going on to sell more than a million copies in the uK. She lives in Sheffield and has a grown-up daughter. IN 1986, when I was 40, my family relocated to Sheffield, and my mother came to visit our new home.

One day, we went shopping in Meadowhall shopping centre, traipsing around this vast glitzy space. After a couple of hours, I noticed my mother was flagging.

Suddenly she said: ‘Marina, let’s sit down and have a cup of tea. I’m not as young as I used to be.’

I had always regarded my mother as a rock at the centre of my life, so what she said alarmed me. I suddenly saw, at 75, she was becoming an old lady.

She used to tell me stories about her childhood in Ukraine, and I’d often thought I would like to write about it.

That cup of tea was my wake-up call. I realised my mother wouldn’t be around for ever to tell her story. The next day, I went out and bought some tapes for my dictaphone.

I ‘interviewed’ my mother about her deportation during Word War II from Ukraine to a displaced persons’ camp in Germany, where I was born, and our family’s move to England after the war.

That tape became the basis of my novel, A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian, which launched my career. Twenty years later, after my mother died, I visited my cousin and aunt in Ukraine. We borrowed a tape recorder and over a glass of vodka and cookies my auntie wept as she listened to her beloved sister telling her story.

Now, when young writers ask for advice, I say: ‘Talk to your parents. They won’t be around for ever.’

tHe Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka is published by Penguin at £8.99.