Böcker av Ilya Ilf

"e;A remarkably funny book written by a remarkable pair of collaborators."e;New York TimesOstap Bender, the "e;grand strategist,"e; is a con man on the make in the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. He's obsessed with getting one last big scorea few hundred thousand will doand heading for Rio de Janeiro, where there are "e;a million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception."e;When Bender hears the story of Alexandr Koreiko, an "e;undercover millionaire"e;no Soviet citizen was allowed to openly hoard so much capitalthe chase is on. Koreiko has made his millions by taking advantage of the wide-spread corruption and utter chaos of the NEP, all while serving quietly as an accountant at a government office and living on 46 rubles a month. He's just waiting for the Soviet regime to collapse so he can make use of his stash, which he keeps hidden away in a suitcase.Ilya Ilf (18971937) and Evgeny Petrov (19031942) were the pseudonyms of Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg and Evgeny Petrovich Katayev, a pair of Soviet writers who met in Moscow in the 1920s while working on the staff of a newspaper that was distributed to railway workers. The foremost comic novelists of the early Soviet Union (invariably referred to as Ilf & Petrov), the pair collaborated together for a dozen years, writing two of the most revered and loved Russian novels, The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf, as well as various humorous pieces for Pravda and other magazines. Their collaboration came to an end following the death of Ilya Ilf in 1937he had contracted tuberculosis while the pair was traveling the United States researching the book that eventually became Little Golden America.Konstantin Gurevich is a graduate of Moscow State University and the University of Texas at Austin. He translates with his wife, Helen Anderson. Both are librarians at the University of Rochester.Helen Anderson studied Russian language and literature at McGill University in Montréal. She translates with her husband, Konstantin Gurevich.

The Twelve Chairs is a classic satirical picaresque novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, published in 1928. Its plot follows characters attempting to obtain jewelry hidden in a chair. A sequel was published in 1931. The novel has been adapted to other media, primarily film.Ilf and Petrov gained a high profile for their two satirical novels: The Twelve Chairs (1928) and its sequel, The Little Golden Calf (1931). The two texts are connected by their main character, Ostap Bender, a con man in pursuit of elusive riches. Both books follow the exploits of Bender and his associates looking for treasure amidst contemporary Soviet reality. They were written and are set in the relatively liberal era in Soviet history, the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. The main characters generally avoid contact with lax law enforcement. Their position outside the organized, goal-driven, productive Soviet society is emphasized. It also gives the authors a convenient platform from which to look at this society and to make fun of its less attractive and less socialist aspects. These are among the most widely read and quoted books in Russian culture. The Twelve Chairs was adapted for ca. twenty movies; in the Soviet Union (by Leonid Gaidai and by Mark Zakharov), in the US (in particular by Mel Brooks), and in other countries.The two writers also traveled across the Great Depression-era United States. Ilf took many pictures throughout the journey, and the authors produced a photo essay entitled "American Photographs," published in Ogoniok magazine.