Ilya Ilf

Ilya Ilf was a Soviet journalist and writer of Jewish origin, best known as one half of the duo Ilf and Petrov, which he wrote with Yevgeny Petrov through the 1920s and 1930s. Together they wrote the comedy novels The Twelve Chairs (1928), the first book in the Ostap Bender series, and The Little Golden Calf (1931). Their satirical account of a journey across the United States in 1935 and 1936, Little Golden America, is a travelogue rather than a novel. Ilf died in 1937.