The Twelve Chairs

13 hrs. 55 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Authors Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov

Author Ilya Ilf

Author Evgeny Petrov

Narrator Arkady Bukhmin

Description

The literary partnership of Ilf and Petrov is unusual in its fate. It touches and moves. They worked together for only a short time—ten years—yet in the history of Soviet literature they left a deep, indelible mark. Memories of them don’t fade, and readers’ love for their books doesn’t weaken. Their novels “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” are widely known. But these novels rise above an entire literary array made up of works of the most various genres. When surveying Ilf and Petrov’s literary legacy—not only the works written together, but also each writer’s separate works—it’s impossible not to be amazed at the breadth of the writers’ creative possibilities, at the literary brilliance of their feuilletons, essays, and comedies.

“The Twelve Chairs” is a novel by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, written in 1927 and being the authors’ first joint work. In 1928 it was published in the fiction and literary magazine “Thirty Days” (Nos. 1–7); in the same year it was issued as a separate book.

Incredible adventures of the great schemer Ostap Bender and “Kisa” (the companion) Vorobyaninov in Soviet Russia as they search for the diamonds hidden in one of the twelve chairs of Madame Petukhova. A brilliant, witty, biting satire with a geniusly constructed, gripping plot.