Ilya Ilf Fainzilberg (1837 – 1937) and Evgeny Petrovich Kataev (1903 – 1942) met in Moscow in 1925 and wrote this novel from a plot idea suggested to them by Kataev’s famous brother, the novelist Valentin. Their subsequent joint works – including The Golden Calf (1931) and One-Storey High America (1936) – were equally popular in Russia.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.

No translator knows Ilf and Petrov like Anne Fisher. The Twelve Chairs is a ruthless skewering of Soviet and Russian culture and society that is as relevant (and funny) today as when it was published in 1928. And of course Fisher’s translation is brilliant and fresh, brimming with invaluable footnotes to provide context and meaning to the text." —Russian Life

Ilya Ilf Fainzilberg (1837 – 1937) and Evgeny Petrovich Kataev (1903 – 1942) met in Moscow in 1925 and wrote this novel from a plot idea suggested to them by Kataev’s famous brother, the novelist Valentin. Their subsequent joint works – including The Golden Calf (1931) and One-Storey High America (1936) – were equally popular in Russia.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.

No translator knows Ilf and Petrov like Anne Fisher. The Twelve Chairs is a ruthless skewering of Soviet and Russian culture and society that is as relevant (and funny) today as when it was published in 1928. And of course Fisher’s translation is brilliant and fresh, brimming with invaluable footnotes to provide context and meaning to the text." —Russian Life