The search for the chairs takes them from the provinces of Moscow to the wilds of the Transcaucasus mountains. 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. 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, j. They were like a breath of fresh air in the stuffy communal flat of Soviet reality, replete with stale smells of cabbage soup and rotten political dogma.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. Hilarious, vitriolic and deeply anti-Soviet, the novels became cult reading for the embattled Soviet intelligentsia. The Twelve Chairs and its sequel The Little Golden Calf were both penned by the brilliant Odessa-born tandem of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I find it both reassuring and calming – like looking at the quiet sea.
Re-reading my favourite Russian books in my second mother tongue has become an addiction: it adds some coveted balance and symmetry to my otherwise rather chaotic life.
I re-read it several times a year – now mostly in English translations. The spring evenings were delightful, the mud glistened like coal in the light of the moon, and all the young men of the town were so much in love with the secretary of the communal-service workers' committee that she found difficulty in collecting their subscriptions." This is the opening paragraph of The Twelve Chairs, my favourite book of all time. In actual fact, people came into the world, shaved, and died rather rarely in the regional centre of N. that the inhabitants seemed to be born merely in order to have a shave, get their hair cut, freshen up their heads with toilet water and then die. "There were so many hairdressing establishments and funeral homes in the regional centre of N.
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