Evgeniy Petrov – författare

Here is a collection of two outstanding novels by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov: "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf". These works became not only the pinnacle of Soviet satire, but also an expressive portrait of the 1920s and 1930s — a time of absurdity, hope, and human ingenuity."The Twelve Chairs" is published in its entirety, without the censored cuts that accompanied the novel from the moment of its first publication. Restored from archival sources, it returns to the reader the authors'' voices in all their freedom and caustic irony.The continuation of the story of Ostap Bender is "The Golden Calf", an equally brilliant novel that combines the grotesque with precise observations of Soviet reality. Together, these books form a complete literary canvas in which humor, fantasy, and satire become a means of deep understanding of human nature and social change.The publication is decorated with illustrations by Soviet artists. Their expressive graphics do not simply accompany the text, but become an independent layer of the narrative, complementing the atmosphere and spirit of the works. These are not just books, but a celebration of language, images and timeless wit.

"Be sure to write down," Ilf often told his co-author, "everything passes, everything is forgotten. I understand - I don''t want to write it down. I want to stare, not write down. But then you have to force yourself." Facts, events, the smallest details, and most importantly, portraits of strange, eccentric, absurd and narrow-minded compatriots - all this, taken from notebooks and seemingly written for oneself, formed a colorful image of the "land of unafraid idiots", where the events of "The Twelve Chairs" will unfold " and "Golden Calf", a region where "the Caucasian ridge was created after Lermontov and according to his instructions", and an "uncultured person" sees in a dream "a bacterium in the form of a large dog", a region from which not a "great schemer" will ever escape ", nor its creators.