This new edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly 50 years, is the Winner of the 2010 Best Translation into English book award from AATSEEL (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages).
This is the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever of this novel, and is the only version that is 100% true to the ...
This new edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly 50 years, is the Winner of the 2010 Best Translation into English book award from AATSEEL (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages).
This is the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever of this novel, and is the only version that is 100% true to the author's original version of the novel. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
The famous satirical sequel to The Twelve Chairs resurrects the con man Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” and follows him and his three hapless co-conspirators on a hilarious romp through the Soviet Russia and Central Asia of 1930.
The Little Golden Calf stands alongside the works of Griboyedov, Pushkin, and Gogol for its profound effect on Russian language and culture. The tale overflows with trenchant catchphrases and legendary literary episodes, offering a portrait of Russian life that is as funny and true today as it was when the novel was first published. For decades, foreigners trying to understand Russia have been advised to read the adventures of Ostap. This new translation makes them more enjoyable than ever!
Conveying cultural difference is always a challenge to the translator, but conveying the cultural difference peculiar to humor is a particularly daunting challenge. The rare translator who rises to the occasion deserves special recognition. Anne O. Fisher is just such a translator. She has not merely given us yet another Little Golden Calf in English (it is the third); she has given us one that will elicit the belly laughs Ilf and Petrov are famous for... without sacrificing accuracy.
Jeffrey Brooks
Bravo for Anne O. Fisher for her wonderful annotated translation of Ilf’s and Petrov’s hilarious road novel, The Little Golden Calf. Students will find the rascally hero to be the ideal tour guide for travels in Stalin’s Russia...Russian Life Books has done a very nice job of producing the volume, which will prove enormously useful in classes in Russian History and Literature.
Language Hat
The translation is fluent and accurate, and best of all it's got all the apparatus you could want: over 300 endnotes explaining cultural references, an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, Fisher's own foreword, a bibliography, an appendix explaining characters’ names, and (mirabile dictu) a bilingual appendix of phrases from the novel that have become popular among Russians... if you want to understand the book in its full cultural and historical context, this is an ideal version
Ilya Arnoldovich Ilf (born Faynzilberg, 1897-1937) and Evgeny Petrovich Petrov (born Katayev, 1903-1942) were famous satirists and humorists. In the 1920s, they individually contributed many pieces to the humor newspaper Gudok. Their main co-authored works were the novels Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf, and the non-fiction work One-Storied America. Ilf died of tuberculosis. Petrov died during the Second World War, while working as a war correspondent.
Anne O. Fisher first tried reading Ilf and Petrov’s Ostap Bender novels in 1995, as an undergraduate exchange student at Petrozavodsk State Pedagogical University, where patient friends spent many hours explaining the books to her. Ten years later, she defended her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Michigan, on the novels’ reading and publishing history from 1928 to the present. She has also translated the coauthors’ account of their 1935-36 road trip through the U.S. (Ilf & Petrov’s American Road Trip, Cabinet Books and Princeton Architectural Press). She has received an NEH grant to work with Alexandra Ilf on a biography of her father, Ilya Ilf, and a translation of his diaries, as well as an NEA translation grant to support the translation from the Russian of The Joyous Science: The Selected Poetry of Maxim Amelin.
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Overview
This is the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever of this novel, and is the only version that is 100% true to the ...