Ilf Ilya, Petrov Evgeny. The Twelve Chairs

Translated by Anne Fisher. — Northwestern University Press, — 574 p. — (Northwestern World Classics). — ISBN10: 0810127725; ISBN13: 978-0810127722.Winner of 2012 Northern California Book Award for Fiction in Translation.
More faithful to the original text and its deeply resonant humor, this new translation of The Twelve Chairs brings Ilf and Petrov’s Russian classic fully to life. The novel’s iconic hero, Ostap Bender, an unemployed con artist living by his wits, joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to look for a cache of missing jewels hidden in chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the chairs takes them from the provinces of Moscow to the wilds of the Transcaucasus mountains. On their quest they encounter a variety of characters, from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the old propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and bungling than the last. A brilliant satire of the early years of the Soviet Union, as well as the inspiration for a Mel Brooks film, The Twelve Chairs retains its universal appeal.
Anne O. Fisher translated Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s The Little Golden Calf (2009), awarded the 2011 AATSEEL Book Prize for Best Translation into English, and Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers (2007), short-listed for the 2007 Rossica prize. She lives in San Francisco.