The Twelve Chairs

"Ostap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in postrevolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels which were hidden in some chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the bejeweled chairs takes these unlikely heroes from the provinces to Moscow to the wilds of Soviet Georgia and the Trans-caucasus mountains; on their quest they encounter a wide variety of characters: from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the prerevolutionary propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and ineffective than the one before."--BOOK JACKET.

Set in

• ★
  Moscow · Russia

  Zhivago childhood home
  ★ primary
• ★
  Kozmodemyansk · Russia

  Bender's chess-tournament con on the fictional Vasyuki, an amalgam of this real Volga town
  ★ primary
• ★
  Pyatigorsk · Russia

  Bender and Vorobyaninov's search continues through the Caucasus spa town
  ★ primary
• ★
  Vladikavkaz · Russia

  Stop on the chair hunt along the Georgian Military Road
  ★ primary
• ★
  Tbilisi · Georgia

  Trans-Caucasus leg of the chair hunt (Tiflis)
  ★ primary
• ★
  Yalta · Ukraine

  Final leg of the chair hunt on the Crimean coast
  ★ primary
• Perm · Russia

  Varykino Ural retreat