Long recognized as a timeless comic masterpiece it inspired a MelBrooks film a half century after its publication The Twelve Chairsappears now in a lively new translation by Anne O. Fisher. Fisher,the most gifted interpreter of Ilf and Petrov in the English language,balances fidelity to the text and the authors characteristic, deeplyresonant humor.The novel s iconic hero, Ostap Bender, an unemployed con artistliving by his wits, joins forces with Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov,a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to look for acache of jewels hidden in a set of chairs that were nationalized afterthe Bolshevik Revolution. The pair s search takes them from theprovinces to Moscow to the peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. On theirquest they encounter a variety of characters, from opportunistic Sovietbureaucrats to aging survivors of the old propertied classes, each onemore selfish, venal, and bungling than the last.