Refugee to Orange Prize finalist

A British woman who was born in a refugee camp in Germany after the end of the Second World War has been nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Marina Lewycka, 58, has been shortlisted for the international prize for her debut novel A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian, a dark comedy about family feuding.

Lewycka's Ukrainian parents were taken to forced labour camps when Ukraine was occupied in the Second World War. At the end of the conflict they took shelter in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, where Lewycka was born.

The family was resettled in Yorkshire and her father went on to become a tractor designer. Her book, published by Viking, is about a widowed father in Peterborough who plans to remarry a voluptuous gold digger from Ukraine and dreams of writing a history of tractors in that language.

Lewycka, one of three British writers on the six-woman shortlist, lectures at Sheffield Hallam University. She suffered a series of knock-backs until her work was marked by an external examiner on a creative writing course. The examiner, a literary agent, offered to find her a publishing deal but when the book hit the shops, booksellers mistakenly stacked it in the agricultural sections.

The nominees for this year's prize, open to female authors writing in English, include two first-time novelists, two third-time novelists and writers who are on their seventh and 15th books.

Jane Gardam, from Kent, is the only author to have won the Whitbread Novel of the Year award twice. She has been nominated for her 15th novel Old Filth, the story of a former international lawyer whose name, in his heyday, stood for Failed In London, Try Hongkong.

Joolz Denby, from Bradford, has been shortlisted for her third novel, Billie Morgan, about a fortysomething woman jeweller who is trying to forget her past as a biker chick and murderer.

Three Americans have been nominated for the £30,000 prize, including Sheri Holman, for The Mammoth Cheese, Maile Meloy, for Liars And Saints, and Lionel Shriver, who is American and lives in London and New York, for We Need To Talk About Kevin.

The winner of the Orange Prize, now in its 10th year, will be announced on 7 June in London.

Chairman of the judges, broadcaster Jenni Murray, said: "Now comes the really tough job of choosing one from such an inspiring group."