Background
Ilf, Il’ia was born on October 16, 1897 in Odessa. Son of a bank clerk.
Ilf, Il’ia was born on October 16, 1897 in Odessa. Son of a bank clerk.
Graduated from Odessa Technical School.
Worked as a designer, telephone operator, technician at an aviation factory, statistician, and editor of the humorous magazine Sindetikon. Wrote and published poetry under a female pseudonym. Worked as an accountant.
Member of the Presidium of the Poets’ Union. Odessa. In 1923, moved to Moscow. Reporter on several newspapers.
Contributor to satirical magazines. Met Evgenii Petrov, who had also come to Moscow from Odessa. This meeting turned into a life-long collaboration.
In 1927, they published their first novel Dvenadtsat' Stuliev (The Twelve Chairs). Both became famous overnight. The sequel, Zolotoi Telenok (The Golden Calf), appeared in 1931.
Both books became, and remain until today, bestsellers in the Soviet Union. Several films have been made of them both in Russia and abroad. After visiting America as Pravda correspondents in the 1930s, they published Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Little Golden America), an unfriendly but humorous description of the country of which both had been admirers.
Complete Works, 5 vols, Moscow, 1961.