I. Ilf and E. Petrov - Twelve chairs and a Golden Calf. Gift books bound in leather.

Ilf and Petrov are Soviet co-authors Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. Natives of the city of Odessa. Together they wrote the famous novels "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf".

"The Twelve Chairs" is a novel written almost a century ago, but it seems that it is quite recent. Everyone quotes him, even those who have not read a single page of the text and have not watched a single film adaptation, and there have already been a lot of them. Ostap Bender, the Great Combinator, has become a household name, and monuments are erected to him all over Russia. The story about how Bender, along with his "partner" Kisa Vorobyaninov, are trying to find Madame Petukhova's diamonds hidden in one of the 12 chairs of the furniture set, has become a truly "folk classic". The novel has been reprinted in Russia almost 200 times, it has been translated into many languages, although it is quite difficult to convey the humor with which this amazing book is oversaturated in every sense. A book that has not yet been fully solved: why did Valentin Kataev propose this plot to two little-known journalists originally from Odessa, do the heroes have prototypes, who is hiding behind the figure of Ostap Bender? Perhaps these riddles will remain riddles forever. And "the meeting continues, gentlemen of the jury"!

"Golden Calf"

The frenzied success that befell Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov after the publication of The Twelve Chairs (1928) prompted the co-authors to "resurrect" their hero, the cheerful and charming conman Ostap Bender, and take up the creation of the novel The Golden Calf (1931). This time, the "great combinator" is developing an operation to take money from the underground millionaire Koreiko. Sparkling humor, unexpected plot twists, aphoristic style and other advantages of the dilogy do not leave anyone indifferent. Novels about Ostap Bender are included in the golden fund of Russian literature.