The Golden Calf, Zolotoi Telenok: An Annotated, Accented Reader With Exercises

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Summary: REALLY THE BEST.
Review: 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.

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Summary: Ostap Bender, will you marry me?
Review: 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!

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