Customer Reviews

The Golden Calf, Zolotoi Telenok: An Annotated, Accented Reader With Exercises (Russian Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have just finished this book (the Russian original) again, as many of the readers who wrote the reviews for "Golden Calf" and "Twelve Chairs", I don't remember how many times I read both of the books... Every time I read them, I find something new or laugh again despite the fact that I know many paragraphs from the book by heart...

These two books are about adventures of the main hero Ostap Bender in Russia in the period between 1927 and 1930. Ostap in a very non-conventional type of "hero", in fact he is an opposite of the typical Soviet stereotype of a good man (factory worker, Communist, faithful husband and etc.). Ostap is a small time con artist who dreams of riches and doesn't think that he belongs to Soviet reality. In both books he's hunting for treasures and the readers get a great chance to catch a glimpse of Soviet reality as seen through his and his mostly inept companions' eyes.

Both books are written with a bright, ever contemporary humor that still makes people laugh even though the USSR is long gone. I don't know how what it is like for the people who weren't born in the former USSR to read these books in languages other than Russian, as some of the funniest things will probably go unnoticed or will be lost in translation. However, I highly recommend reading both of them if one wants to understand Soviet culture better or impress friends from the former USSR by using phrases that became a part of the general culture (i.e. "Money in the evening, chairs in the morning" or "I will command the parade!").

The books were even further popularized by the great TV series "Twelve Chairs" with a star cast of Soviet cinematography (A. Mironov as Ostap and A.Papanov as Ippolit) and "Golden Calf" with a great cast as well.

The only books in Russian that I always keep (in my mostly technical collection) are these two and "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov - another great masterpiece...

This one's written in the Russian language. I don't see that fact mentioned anywhere on this page. Just FYI.

10 stars on a five-stars scale! Perhaps, the best way to describe this masterpiece is to say that I have re-read so many times, that I even don't know how many. You can pick up this book and open it on random pages, you can read the chapters in the backward order (I have done both)- it is still the best of the best! Several generations of Russians have incorporated quatations from "12 Chairs" and "Golden Calf" in their everyday vocabulary - these novels are just that great and popular. If you want to understand "the mysterious Russian soul" of the socialist period - this is perhaps the best way to do so. Oh, and be prepared to constantly laugh so hard that your neighbors will attempt to commit you! It definitely is one of the funniest pieces ever written. Borrow "12 Chairs" and "Golden Calf" books, buy them, steal them - just READ THEM!

This one is my favorite out the extraordinary twosome (The Golden Calf and The Twelve Chairs that is). The adventures and misadventures of the characters, the brilliant humor, the marriage with the incidental theft of a tea accessory, the wild ride in a stolen car, the hilarious boat trip-it all just fits right to create a story that will keep your stomach convulsing and your eyes tearing up. Everyone needs to read this book in order to understand Russians better. I re-read it many times in my teenage years simply because if you live in Russia(or any other Eastern European country for that matter),you will be able to understand those countless quotes taken from this masterpiece and incorporated into everyday language. The characters are hysterical in the least, and the story so seemingly simple contains much bigger messages than available to the naked eye.Please,read this book,and if you understand the humour and sadness of it,you'll be well on your way to understanding not just Russian culture but humans in general. And to the reviewer below who asked if this was ever made into a movie:HELL YES and thank god it was! It's a very old movie (70s era perhaps, cannot say with certainty) which became a Russian classic-perhaps as much as the book itself. So yes, read this book, you will not regret it!

If you can imagine bumping along dirt roads ridden with potholes through the outback of Russia in a stolen car, with three other crooks, in desperate flight from Socialist authorities and the true Across-all-Russia roadrace of the 1920's NEP period, well, you can imagine one of the funniest books ever. I found this paperbook by accident in a box of discards, dipped in because it was about Russia, and read it straight through with incredible delight. It is amazing that the two authors, both killed at about age 40 in WWII, were not thrown to the Gulag.

These crooks on the loose, with their ingenuity and street smarts, who impersonate the sons of former great national Generals in order to cadge money and cafetaria tickets, who take the heroes' welcome due to the real roadrace cars and dine at the citizens' expense wherever they go... surely this was made into a movie somewhere along the line? Now that the USSR is gone?

I'm waiting for it at the video store.

Firstly, I read the book in an original Russian edition so I make no claims about this particular edition.

Ilf and Petrov were two satirical writers who were very popular in the Soviet Union. Of course during the writing of this book (and its prequel the Twelve Chairs) it was impossible to satirise life in the 20s and 30s in the USSR directly without losing your life. They managed to write two books that satisfied both the officials and the readers. The books are incredibly funny and absurd dissections of almost every aspect of Soviet society, but often the most punchy parts aren't said explicitly. They also make fun of the pre-Soviet mindset just as well.

In The Golden Calf we again see Ostap Bender the charismatic con artist re-emerge after surviving his last adventure against all odds. He teams up with a small handful of other petty criminals and a car and they come up with another enrichment scheme. This time, they aim to blackmail Koreiko who they find out is a millionaire. They go on a road trip to end all road trips and again see their country through the magnifying glass that is the satire of Ilf and Petrov. There is also an ideological part as Bender's investigation of Koreiko's past causes him to "lose his faith in humanity" and he also finds that having money in the USSR is no advantage whatsoever - in fact it alienates him further from society (one of my favourite scenes is when a dejected Bender seeks an audience with a visiting Indian philosopher to find out the meaning of life).

A fierce, sharp but warmhearted satire on early Soviet and pre-Soviet society - make sure to read the prequel too!

This is the best book ever written on the subject of the Soviet Union. No one knows why the authors never got shot, but they were lucky. Read "The twelve chairs" as well, but this is the best. Funny and true.

Little wonder that the characters of this wonderful story (and the preceding The Twelve Chairs) have become household names in Russia. Ilf & Petrov's sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, often sarcastic and always enjoyable tale of master-conman Ostap Bender deserves to be read. It is one of those books that you can see before you as a movie - and one that should really be made into one.