Novel
The Twelve Chairs
Двенадцать стульев
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov · 1928
Opening lines
В уездном городе N было так много парикмахерских заведений и бюро похоронных процессий, что казалось, жители города рождаются лишь затем, чтобы побриться, остричься, освежить голову вежеталем и сразу же умереть.
In the district town of N there were so many barber's shops and funeral parlours that it seemed the inhabitants were born only to get a shave, have a haircut, freshen their heads with hair tonic and die straight away.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ru.wikisource.org
Synopsis
In 1927, in a small provincial town, Hippolyte Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman turned registry office clerk, learns from his dying mother-in-law that she hid the family jewels in one of the twelve chairs of their dining room, which remained in Stargorod. The priest Fyodor Vostrikov, who received the same confession, also sets off on the search. On the way, Vorobyaninov meets Ostap Bender, a self-assured swindler who imposes himself as a partner, and the two men set off on the trail of the scattered chairs.
Context
The idea came from Valentin Kataev, who helped the two authors draw up the broad outline. Written from September 1927 to January 1928, the novel appeared in the Moscow magazine Trente jours, in issues 1 to 7 of 1928, then in book form the same year. A sequel, with the same hero, appeared in 1931. The book has been adapted for the screen several times, notably by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in 1962, Mel Brooks in 1970 and Leonid Gaidai in 1971.
Who it is for
A comic adventure novel, fast-moving, which can be read without knowing the period and leads on to a sequel written by the same authors.
Prizes and reception
One of the most quoted books in Russian literature, often adapted for cinema and television.