Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Golden Calf Galleys Online

Open Letter has placed the galleys of a new translation of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s Золотой телёнок (The Golden Calf) online here, for a limited time.

Open Letter’s materials say that Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson translated “the uncensored original, and it restores several chapters missing from earlier versions, including a witty ‘From the Authors’ rant about humor and satire.” The book will be released December 31, 2009.

I won’t let you forget about Il'f and Petrov or the new translation: tonight, yes, tonight, commences my Fall 2009 Il’f and Petrov Reading Project. I’ll start by reading (and finishing, this time!) Двенадцать стульев (The Twelve Chairs), then move on to The Golden Calf, which is a sequel of sorts to Chairs. I’ll finish the project with some nonfiction: Одноэтажная Америка (One-Storey America, also known as Little Golden America), Il’f and Petrov’s account of their 1935-1936 road trip across the United States.

Russian friends have been recommending One-Storey America to me for years, and one was kind enough to give me a nice edition of the book, complete with Il’f’s photographs, as a gift this year. Though I don’t read many whole books of nonfiction, I’m unusually excited about this one for personal reasons: my grandfather and his cousin took a cross-country road trip in 1929.

Photo: Il’f and Petrov, 1932, taken by E. Langman. Via Wikipedia.


Il'f and Petrov on Amazon

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