Marina Lewycka says that as a woman she has to look like an author. Her dark hair is cut just above the shoulder, she wears a check jacket over a dark blue, bamboo-patterned blouse, black slacks and flat shoes.

She is speaking in the lounge of her Beijing hotel, before giving a talk at the Bookworm Festival last week, about her unusual rise to literary stardom. Her debut novel published when she was 59, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, sold a million copies in 30 languages.

Her second book, Two Caravans, is about migrant workers in Britain and was dedicated to the 21 Chinese immigrant cockle pickers who died in Morecambe, 2004, though the book is not about them directly.

"My hairdo is a nod to the Chinese. But then again it's always been like this, so there you go, I just blend in," says Lewycka, who as you would expect from a comedy writer has a chatty style.

"It helps that I have Mongolian roots. My daughter looks quite Chinese, with high cheekbones and a rather flat face. I keep seeing her everywhere, but then perhaps I'm just missing her."

She says being published late in life liberated her as a writer, enables her to say what she wants and ignore fears of rejection.

"I think if I had been published earlier I would have taken myself more seriously and been one of those authors with a capital A - you know, the kind with big insights and not likely to laugh at themselves."

This observation becomes apparent when she talks about her visit to China. She describes an evening walk in Beijing, feeling safe, people ballroom dancing in the park.

"I tried dancing myself and made a few people laugh. I think the great thing is that you lose a lot of your inhibitions after 60. You become less self-conscious. I mean, after all, everything bad that could have happened already has."

She then tells a story about having a stomach complaint in Shanghai and trying to tell the chemist, in actions, since neither of them spoke the same language, that she was constipated.

"The more you travel the more you realize things are the same, like people, their dreams and unhappiness, and most importantly their sense of humor."

(China Daily March 18, 2009)