Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. The Golden Calf

The wild success that befell Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov after the publication of The Twelve Chairs (1928) inspired the co-authors to "resurrect" their hero, the cheerful and charming con man Ostap Bender, and to begin writing the novel The Golden Calf (1931). This duology, which has become a treasure trove of 20th-century Russian literature and has seen hundreds of reprints, is extremely rarely published with the magnificent illustrations created by the Kukryniksy family. This edition offers readers the opportunity to discover this work by Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov, better known by their resonant collective pseudonym. These outstanding cartoonists, classics of book illustration, not only managed to convey the atmosphere of the 1920s, but their creative style proved incredibly consonant with the sparkling satire of Ilf and Petrov.